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The 
Divine Opportunity 



Sermons Preached by 

F. B. STOCKDALE 



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NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



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Copyright, 1905, by 
EATON & MAINS. 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction 7 

The Divine Opportunity 9 

A Great Definition 25 

The First Thing God Did 40 

Every Man's Picture , . 54 

When Is a Man Himself ? 67 

The Suicide of Fear 81 

The Preparation of a Man for a Prophet's 

Place 96 

How to Live Outside One's Self in 

A New Position on an Old Battleground. . 124 



INTRODUCTION 



Many are the elements of preaching. If 
Christian public sentiment were to unite on its 
one essential characteristic, I suppose it would 
be imperatively required that the preacher 
should have a message. Whatever a man may 
have attained, unless he bear the commission 
to speak in behalf of God, he cannot be a 
preacher in the true sense of the word. "The 
prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a 
dream; and he that hath my word, let him 
speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff 
to the wheat? saith the Lord." 

The author of this volume of sermons is a 
seer, a herald, a messenger. To those who 
have heard him preach this will not be new 
information. If others may be inclined to 
attribute the statement to the enthusiasm of 
friendship, let them read the volume. 

"Would God that all the Lord's people were 
prophets." 

William F. Anderson. 

New York, March 4, 1905. 



THE DIVINE OPPORTUNITY 



THE DIVINE OPPORTUNITY 

"For the invisible things of him from the crea- 
tion of the world are clearly seen, being understood 
by the things that are made, even his eternal power 
and Godhead." — Rom. I. 20. 

The apostle is writing of great things — the 
"invisible things" of God, "his eternal power 
and Godhead." This is a realm majestic, yet 
when we follow Paul in thought we see his 
conclusions are self-evident — as all truths 
must be. 

Let us look at the argument. It is so simple 
that a child can understand, but so far-reach- 
ing that no philosopher can escape it. In- 
visible things are seen by things that are 
made — a contradiction in words but a truth 
in fact. The seen reveals the unseen: the 



io The Divine Opportunity 

house proclaims a builder; a footprint in the 
snow tells a traveler has gone by. We so 
unhesitatingly apply this argument to life that 
when we pause to put it into words it seems 
strange that we should ever disbelieve it in 
any of its possible applications. Suppose that 
from the planet Mars should fall to earth a 
building; we pick up the fragments and find 
joist and beam, door, window, and sill. We 
should then know that Mars was inhabited. 
It would be impossible to believe otherwise. 
If among the pieces should be found a baseball 
bat every boy would know they made baseball 
bats, and most boys would believe they played 
baseball out there. Give the thought a larger 
application. Who made the flowers, the in- 
sects, the birds and beasts in myriad forms of 
life ? John's statement is perfectly rational : 
"Without him was not anything made that 
was made. ,, Thought demands some person 
as the maker of everything made. ' All created 
things are from the Creator. It matters not 
to this argument whether it took a million 
years to make a worm or a moment to make 
a man. The creature proclaims a Creator. 
Step out into the starlit night, and above the 
hum of insect life the voice of those great 
orbs are heard, "in wisdom's ear," 



The Divine Opportunity ii 

"Forever singing, as they shine, 
The hand that made us is divine.' " 

That is not only poetic, but true. It is self- 
evident to thought. He who doubts it should 
question his sanity, for he is an irrational 
thinker. 

Paul goes further than many have carried 
the argument. To him not only does the made 
reveal a maker, the thought a thinker, but the 
seen reveals the unseen. The visible is a proc- 
lamation of the Invisible. When we see a 
building we know the builder is seeable, but 
here we are in a realm where the Maker can 
only be known by what he makes, the Actor by 
what he does. We shall never know God 
save through those forms by which he sees fit 
to speak. Not until the "Word" is "made 
flesh" and dwells among us do we behold his 
glory. 

Below this argument is what may seem like 
an assumption, yet we shall find it vital to our 
thinking. It is the basis of the argument, and 
might thus be stated: power cannot be seen, 
nature cannot be known, apart from their 
manifestations. The mechanical world is full 
of illustrations showing that power cannot be 
seen. Steam is invisible. But when we see 
the ponderous wheels, the heavy piston, the 



12 The Divine Opportunity 

massive engine, with its freight, begin to move 
in answer to the opening of a valve, gathering 
momentum till every part of truck and wheel 
and brake seem possessed as by some living 
thing, we know steam is a power. And what 
a factor in the world's life this invisible agent 
is ! It is said that more work is done by steam 
than five worlds the size of ours could do if 
peopled by strong men as densely as our cities 
are. 

The same is true of electricity. The light 
you see is not the electric current, but the 
vibrating atmosphere, disturbed by this power. 
Unobserved it leaps from point to point of the 
carbon, and though our atmosphere has a 
pressure of fourteen pounds to the square inch, 
touched by this subtle force it vibrates millions 
of times per second, thus causing light. It 
dwells in the flower; throws the shuttle that 
weaves the leaf and shapes the human body; 
yet none have ever seen it. 

In the same class of natural forces is 
gravity. It holds the snowflake as it falls, 
with the same ease grasps the whirling 
spheres, and operates through all the bounds 
of space. None have fenced it in or told its 
color. It is not defined by measured miles or 
angled cubes. All power is of the same 



The Divine Opportunity 13 

nature — too subtle for our eyes, too elusive for 
our grasp. The thrill of joy, the blow of 
sorrow, may not be seen ; but they are mighty. 
In many realms we have proof that power is 
unseeable. In its presence we tread the folds 
of the garment of God, and stand on the 
threshold of the spirit world. 

Fixing these two things in mind — the seen 
reveals the unseen, power cannot be known 
apart from its manifestations — we are pre- 
pared for the apostle's threefold application of 
the argument. 

I. Creation. 

Creation is an exhibition of God's power. 
Whatever may be said about the wisdom of 
creation, nothing can be said against the 
statement that it clearly demonstrates an 
eternal, invisible power. In the natural forces 
that play about us — the rushing current, the 
howling wind, the flashing lightning — we see 
exhibitions of power. But when we seek to 
grasp creation, all bounds, all worlds, all suns 
and systems, then the mind is overwhelmed 
with manifestations of might. This the hea- 
then world could see: "Because that which 
may be known of God is manifest in them ; for 
God manifested it unto them. For the in- 
visible things of him from the creation of the 



14 The Divine Opportunity 

world are clearly seen, being understood by 
the things that are made, even his eternal 
power and Godhead ; so that they are without 
excuse." The sin of idolatry was a violation 
of the gospel of creation. In a world sur- 
rounded by myriads of stars, with day suc- 
ceeding day and seasons in order rolling, with 
power, in large letters, writ on heaven above 
them and countless exhibitions about them, 
they "change the glory of the incorruptible 
God for the likeness of an image of corruptible 
man, and of birds, and fourfooted beasts, and 
creeping things, . . . and worshiped and 
served the creature rather than the Creator." 
They pushed littleness into the place of power. 
The God of nature they would not know. The 
ancient world was a sinful world before it was 
a benighted one. In the moral realm punish- 
ment cannot be applied where guilt is not con- 
tracted. God giving them up was the result 
of their giving him up. They listened not to 
the voices "that have gone out into all the 
world." They sinned against nature. God 
spake in a voice they could not fail to hear. 
In things seen he revealed his unseen power. 
Creation is a declaration of power. Heathen- 
ism is a rejection of the Creator for the cre- 
ated, or ancient materialism. Ancient hea- 



The Divine Opportunity 15 

thenism is modern materialism, and modern 
materialism is ancient heathenism; and none 
the more holy because it more surely pampers 
the creature. 

II. Sin. 

The second application of the argument is 
to the power of sin. This is not the place to 
enter into a discussion of so great a subject 
as sin. That were far too large a theme for 
one sermon. We emphasize the startling fact 
of its awful power. Here it is the power of 
a false relation, or, more strictly, the result 
of such relation. The relation was the re- 
sult of freedom, and sin the result of choice. 
There is no sin in freedom. But the free 
choice, which excludes God, includes the re- 
sult of that exclusion — a reprobate mind. 
The result of excluding God is here set forth 
as a power which manifests itself in all the 
unmentionable vices of this arraignment. To 
refuse to have God in the life is to put oneself 
in a false relation and be "filled with all un- 
righteousness" as a result. Choice we have; 
but no man can choose not to choose. We 
must be swayed by right or wrong. We must 
"worship and serve" the creature or the Cre- 
ator. To turn to the "creature" is to be "filled 
with all unrighteousness" — a term that em- 



16 The Divine Opportunity 

braces all that follows, or may follow. To be 
false to nature made them sinners against 
nature. The false relation of life was the sin 
of life. And sin showed itself in the ma- 
lignant forms specified — "fornication, wicked- 
ness, covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, 
murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 
backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, 
boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient 
to parents, without understanding, covenant- 
breakers, without natural affection, implacable, 
unmerciful; who knowing the judgment of 
God, . . . not only do the same, but have 
pleasure in them that do them." Would God 
that was ancient history ! They are the forms 
that sin still falls into, the body that it wears, 
the shapes the unseen power takes. Sin is not 
a something for which man is not responsible ; 
it is the result of his own choice. Choice we 
have and must use. When the soul turns to 
the creature, instead of the Creator, sin is 
born, and he is born a giant. Sin is man's 
creation. Read the awful indictment of the 
twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh verses; they 
are the result of the twenty-fifth verse — a re- 
sult so hideous that its very vileness hides it 
from the modern mind. To charge all these 
forms of sin to nature is to hold God to be 



The Divine Opportunity 17 

their author, which is fatalism and dualism 
combined. These manifestations were the re- 
sult of choosing to worship and serve the 
creature rather than the Creator. Sin as here 
set forth is a result of choice and service, a 
decision and a continuance. The result is the 
creation of a power that exists though unseen. 
And from that mystic realm is born this brood 
of vipers, prostituting the body to unnatural 
uses, debasing its most holy functions; filling 
the mind with darkness ; moving the sensibili- 
ties with hate, instead of love, toward God; 
robbing the race of natural affection; making 
man a covenant-breaker — thus giving birth to 
all the bloody forms of war. Not the least of 
the forms this power takes is "disobedience to 
parents." Boys, when you are disobedient to 
father and mother, don't think you are show- 
ing your freedom; you are exhibiting a form 
of that sin which spoils boyhood, debases man- 
hood, and damns old age. Young men and 
young women, remember that those who ac- 
cept the bodily pleasures of life, and shirk the 
moral responsibilities growing therefrom, are 
first cousins to those ancient sinners. 

Though sin may have no color, is not de- 
fined by size; though in the abstract it is un- 
known and unknowable — thus deciding its 



18 The Divine Opportunity 

study must be historical rather than meta- 
physical, and from our meager knowledge 
pushing us to the personal — it is mighty. 
And like a mighty hand from hell it grasps in 
its viselike hold a world; obscures the mind, 
warps the affections, and enslaves the soul. It 
is not the question as to whether sin is an 
emanation from a satanic person, or a result 
of human will exhibiting itself in choice and a 
steady perseverance, that here we discuss. 
We simply emphasize its awful power. Let 
effete nations and buried civilizations tell its 
power. Listen to the wail of heathenism and 
watch the struggle of civilization if you doubt 
its power. A world is not pushed into such 
unrighteous, unnatural conditions by a myth 
or a shadow. Whatever sin may not be, sin 
is a power; that our own personal experience 
confirms. To him who knows his own history 
it is self-evident that sin is mighty. It may 
have distilled no further than thought, so that 
to all besides it is in the realm unseen, but he 
knows its grip and his own helplessness in its 
grasp. To debate, Are we sinners? is to pro- 
claim ourselves knaves or fools. To question 
its power is to belie every contest we have had 
with it, and rob history of any meaning. Sin, 
as a power, is in the unseen; as a manifesta- 



The Divine Opportunity 19 

tion it is matter of experience and a fact of 
life, or a self-evident truth. 

III. The Gospel 

The third application of the argument is to 
the gospel of Christ, which is defined as the 
"power of God" ; thus placing on the summit 
of dynamics the gospel of Jesus. What can 
be more mighty than the "power of God"? 
If you study the gospel as you study steam, 
you may come to some idea of its might. We 
know the power of steam by its lifting ca- 
pacity. But you cannot lift men "out of an 
horrible pit" by steam. The soul is too heavy 
for its pull. The gospel is more potential than 
electricity; you cannot light a soul with a 
battery. Not even the all-pervasive power of 
gravity is strong enough to hold a man to the 
right in time of temptation. Let the experi- 
ence of a regenerated man, the history of a 
renovated people, stand as the result, and 
what mechanic will measure the casual power 
of such result? Only God can lift a soul. 
Don't be afraid for the gospel. Our creeds 
will change with the growing years; and as- 
stronomy will change, though the stars keep 
their courses. What we think of the gospel 
is one thing; what it is is another. The 
world's thinking grows better because we 



20 The Divine Opportunity 

come the nearer to "the bright and morning 
star." 

Think for a moment of the proposition of 
saving a world, and such a world ! Then re- 
member it is one thing to "wash whiter than 
the snow" and another to make the sinner 
want to be washed. The gospel is equal to 
both. Christ is equal to creating in human 
hearts a want for goodness. In the evolution 
of the race who put it into the hearts of men 
to want a "parliament of men" ? What makes 
it possible for men to live above the "lusts of 
the flesh"? What is it that snaps the chain 
of habit, that cuts the cords of sin, lifting men 
to the light of God's favor and to fellowship 
with his Son ? That power which renews men 
and is saving the world is no weakling force ; 
unseen in the abstract, but in its manifestations 
as patent as the rolling stars. 

In conclusion, see how God has seized every 
opportunity for self-revelation. With what 
avidity did he grasp the opportunity space 
offered. 

The "Milky Way," like ashes strewn across our sky, 
When seen through telescopic eye, 
Falls into systems awful and sublime, 
Which from the earliest dawn of time 
Have burned and shone, 



The Divine Opportunity 21 

And back into the endless deeps, 

In vain God's heavens man's vision sweeps 

To find an end; 
While to the mind creation's measured 
Space with such jewels God has treasured 
That to our vision it is infinite. 

And looking out we clearly see space was 
an opportunity, which God embraced, to mani- 
fest his power. But that is all it shows. 
It knows no mercy, for it works by law; 
it speaks no pardon, for it has no guilt. 
When first he willed those orbs in space no 
human mind can tell; semi-eternal they must 
be, for God could ne'er be idle. From the un- 
seen they came to sight, freighted with some 
revelation of the Divine; for when the morn- 
ing stars sang together all the sons of God 
shouted for joy. 

What will God do with guilt, beside which 
space is small? The stars tell his relation to 
the one, the gospel his attitude to the other. 
Lord Russell Wallace, by speculation, has dis- 
covered that man is the center of the universe. 
Most true speculations are Bible truths sifting 
through the sands of the human mind. The 
center of the universe ? Certainly. The angels 
are still guarding Eden's gate to keep man 
from immortalizing himself in sin. They 



22 The Divine Opportunity 

come to Abraham, and rescue Lot; message 
and food to prophet or seer anon they bring. 
They are on the hillside to sing the advent of 
the Son of God. On the mount of transfigu- 
ration they seek to know what Calvary shall 
mean ; they are at the tomb, and on the mount 
of ascension ; they come to awake the sleeping 
Peter and lead him to the open prison gate. 
Angelic footprints shine through all the Book 
of God. 

Turn to those matchless parables of Jesus: 
the shepherd counts his sheep and finds one 
missing. Here is not only a lost sheep, but 
also an opportunity for the shepherd to show 
his valuation of a sheep. When God first made 
the stars we do not know ; but it is history that 
sin was not a day old ere God was seeking the 
sinner : "Adam, where art thou ?" Moses was 
profoundly right when he wrote a history and 
not an analysis of sin. The shepherd will seek 
"until" he find it. God will seek so long as 
any are astray. It did not take him long to 
count his ninety-and-nine, but how long he 
has been seeking! 

See the father as he runs to meet and kiss 
his son. Space shows the power of will; the 
father's kiss, the power of love. His love is 
equal to more than building a home and fur- 



The Divine Opportunity 23 

nishing food. The prodigal with his father's 
kiss is richer than the elder brother with his 
wealth of things. The returning son gives 
an opportunity to sound the depths of a fa- 
ther's heart. The parables do not create, but 
reveal, the truths they set forth. God is "at 
home" to every sinner in any age, and where 
the first guilty sinner left him the last return- 
ing one will find him. The gospel is an ever- 
lasting declaration that God suffers no chance 
for self-revelation to wait. Space is room for 
creation ; sin is a Calvary on which God rears 
his cross. Creation declares his ability to 
make; Calvary, in blood, affirms his ability to 
save. The cross is the highest peak that God 
has reached in the revelation of himself to 
finite beings, human or angelic. Into its mean- 
ing the angels still inquire, and as one by one 
the lost come home they see some exhibition 
of its Godlike power. It is inconceivable that 
his love will ever take deeper form. He can 
reach no further from himself than sin. The 
folly of the prodigal, the "elder brother, with- 
out natural affection," forms a dark back- 
ground before which flames a father's love. 
To know that "all that I have is thine" is one 
thing ; all that I am is thine, is another. Space 
gives us things ; Calvary gives us God. Above 



24 The Divine Opportunity 

all the powers that play about us is the "power 
of God" lighting and lifting souls, reclaiming 
and redeeming peoples, and it will yet bring 
the world to love one another and love him. 
Creation shows the power of will, and Calvary 
the power of love. One is the Father's home, 
the other the Father's heart. Space keeps a 
calf, but Calvary a kiss. 



A GREAT DEFINITION 

"God is love."— i John 4. 8. 

To see the size of this text, make it less. 
God loved: that declares the being, and de- 
scribes the emotions, of the Deity. It gives 
no present message; the past tense may leave 
us out. God loves: that is larger than the 
other; it declares his being and describes his 
qualities. These statements are small com- 
pared with the text. The text declares what 
he did, what he does, and then with an infinite 
sweep embraces his nature and defines what 
he is. Yet apart from what a person does we 
cannot know what he is. The person is re- 
vealed by his action. We speak of selfish men ; 
it may not be true of the man's whole life, but 
we have seen actions that determine him to 
be selfish. We speak of vicious people ; their 
actions compel our judgment. The action par- 
takes of the nature of the actor ; and a person 
is what his actions determine him to be. Love 
never comes out of hate, neither does a pure 
spring send forth a filthy stream. Good and 
goodness, bad and badness, go together — one 



26 The Divine Opportunity 

the person, the other the action. If this be 
not true, then there is no way by which man 
may know his fellow man, or come to know 
his God. But this is true ; and Christ declares 
that by this law we come to know others, for 
"by their fruits ye shall know them. ,, That 
is true of God as it is true of man. Thus only 
can we know that "God is love." We can 
never see the Eternal, Invisible God; but by 
what he does we may know what he is. We 
come to know the human mind through the 
achievement of human hands ; we grasp the 
human heart through the unswerving devo- 
tion of a human body. 

We wish to establish one proposition : Every 
action of the Divine Being, that we under- 
stand, shows that its basal cause is love. 

We read, as our lesson, the first chapter of 
Genesis, because that is the first record of his 
action. The first move must be as true to his 
nature as the last will be. It is unthinkable 
that he will contradict himself. What that 
condition was that is described as "without 
form and void" we cannot tell; there was no 
light, no life, and, as we now know it, no or- 
der. Into the darkness and gloom a God of 
light and love, in majesty, comes and the 
work of creation begins. He moves "upon 



A Great Definition 27 

the face of the waters" and says, "Let there be 
light: and there was light." Read this chap- 
ter carefully; dig to the ground of it; mark 
all the steps in the work of God. Hear him as 
he calls light into existence ; look as he spreads 
out the heavens; listen as with a rushing 
sound the waters come together, the dry land 
appears. Behold! he clothes the earth in 
living green, the grass grows, the flowers 
bloom; while the trees, spreading their 
branches far and wide, lift their proud heads 
toward heaven. Mark those blazing orbs, 
as God puts them in the heavens; he scat- 
ters stars as a farmer might sow grain. Now 
the waters teem with life, the air is peo- 
pled with birds and the earth with cattle. Out 
of what was "without form and void" comes 
light, life, order, and beauty. Why? Did 
God create light that he might see? The 
darkness and the light are both alike to God. 
Did he place sun and moon and stars in heaven 
to measure times and seasons for himself? 
There is no time with God. He is no older 
now than when the world began; he will be 
no older in eternity than ere creation dawned. 
Did God create the fish that he might eat, the 
birds and cattle that he might feast? No. 
There is no need in God to which anything 



28 The Divine Opportunity 

created was an answer. God's work was all 
outside himself. He has never consumed a 
thing that he made. Then, why did God 
create the world for which he had no need? 
You might ask the same question as the 
builder cuts down the tree, the sculptor carves 
the marble, or the painter daubs the canvas. 
For answer to your question you must wait 
till you see the use made of the productions. 
You will then know the end and will be able 
to find the reason. The builder sees the mast 
of a ship in the growing tree, the painter a 
landscape on the canvas; in the marble cold 
the sculptor sees an angel's form. God saw 
the end before he began ; and we can find the 
reason of his action only in the use he makes 
of his creation. The end will give the motive 
of his action. Nothing that is incidental will 
answer for his work. If new emotions fill his 
heart, as one by one his works are done, that 
is but incidental, and not the object of his toil. 
The work was not done to create the emotion ; 
neither was the emotion solely on account of 
the work, but because of its adaptability to the 
far-off end. The unborn man was in his 
thought as day by day "God saw that it was 
good." As you must wait for the finish ere 
you are able to determine the use, so you must 



A Great Definition 29 

tarry for the object; then you will find the 
motive. In answer to the question, Why did 
God make the world? I answer, "Let us make 
man in our image, after our likeness: and 
let them have dominion over the fish of the 
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the 
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." 
The disposition God makes of the earth shows 
the motive, as well as the object, of his work. 

You will find the reason of God's creation 
in his use of it; and he gave it to man — not 
only the earth, but the stars also : "All things 
are yours." The whole creation is man's 
birthright. If he has not yet taken possession 
of his heritage, that must not impugn God's 
motive. As he comes nearer to God's image 
he comes closer to dominion ; when the image 
is complete his possession will be final. God 
never created things in answer to any need of 
his own. He anticipated the needs of the man 
that was to be. He made light before the eye ; 
sound, with all its infinite variations, before 
the ear; food before desire; and not one of 
the things made was for himself. Then, what 
is the spirit of such provision ? Why does the 
woman provide for the unborn? In human 
life we attribute it to the highest form of mor- 



30 The Divine Opportunity 

tal love. To what shall we attribute the divine 
provision ? Shall we change the spirit because 
we have to enlarge the measure? If love pro- 
vides a wardrobe, what prepares a world ? 

In all man's triumphs he has never discov- 
ered a need that God had not foreseen, and 
for it made provision. In his highest achieve- 
ments he has but blended things. The gods 
of the Greeks were magnified men. For every 
sense and every faculty God has made a rich 
and full provision. We say, "It is love that 
leads the bird to cover her young in time 
of rain, and the mother, with delight, to make 
provision for her unborn child. ,, What shall 
we say to the rich provision nature shows? 
With every need so fully met, then, I declare, 
the only motive for its base is God's eternal 
love. 

It is worthy of remark that God's provision 
is not partial. He does not even give ac- 
cording to our appreciation, but of his infinite 
love "he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and 
on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and 
on the unjust." Creation's song is Calvary in 
a minor key. Am I informed that science has 
discovered creation's days were long? I care 
not if every day be a thousand years, and every 
hour a million more; it does not in the least 



A Great Definition 31 

effect the motive. It but confirms the love of 
God. It gives me eons of divine thought, eons 
of Almighty activity, all for another, and he 
yet uncreated. If love be not at the base of 
such action, then there is no love in the world 
of God. If rightly we listen we shall find : 

The vast machinery that works in space, 
And makes the world a habitable place, 

Sings one eternal song, 
The stars above, the flowers below, 
The summer's sun, or winter's snow, 
The birds, the cattle and the grain, 
The mountain bleak, the fertile plain; 

Yea, everything that is. 
By things below, and things above, 
The theme is everlasting Love, 

An anthem to our God. 

God's provision for man's spiritual life is as 
complete as his supply for his temporal good. 
Man is more than an animal. He needs more 
than food. He has a conscience, a memory ; 
he is a spirit. One of God's first gifts was his 
companionship. The law by which every good 
life leaves the world better is one of God's ar- 
rangements and is an act of kindness. The 
results of sin reach to the third and fourth 
generation ; the consequences of righteousness, 
to a thousand generations. God's law looks to 



32 The Divine Opportunity 

the soul. Creation is not for the heart. It is 
at best a staging for his feet, an inspiration 
to his mind. It is an argument the skeptic 
cannot answer, that Christ as surely satisfies 
the heart as food appeases hunger. The spirit 
knows no lack that Christ cannot fill. 

Those who deny the divinity of the Lord 
Jesus will not deny that the impulse of his 
life was love. Those who in the Man of sor- 
rows see the Son of God need no other proof 
that "God is love." We may have been mis- 
taken in limiting this text to the life of Jesus. 
This may have arisen from the fact that in the 
Son we see God's glory in more effulgence. 

The stars, that shine so bright at night, 
Are hidden by the morning light. 
His life puts all things else in shade. 

It was love that led him to the leper, to the 
blind, the poor; to the homes of sickness and 
death. It brought him to Bethlehem and took 
him to Calvary. Love, only, stoops to raise 
another. 

Our highest ideal of love is the gift of life 
for a friend, and "for a good man some would 
even dare to die." When, in love of liberty or 
country, one gives his life, history takes up a 
song, and makes the deed immortal. Nothing 



A Great Definition 33 

dearer than life, nothing more can be given. 
When one gives life for another we never 
think of charging it to enmity's account. 
Without the thought of having to prove it, 
we say, "That was love." Human love may 
go as far as giving life for a friend ; but "God 
commendeth his love toward us, in that while 
we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Well 
might the apostle say, "Herein is love." For 
in Christ the divine love comes to us, and, 
mounting, towers far above any conception of 
love the world has ever known before. The 
friend dies for the foe, the pure for the im- 
pure, the Creator for the creature. Up and up 
it mounts, until the highest peak is reached 
that human life offers footing to. The divine 
love plants itself upon the cruel cross, returning 
love for hatred, a prayer for a blow, a crown 
for a cross, and with bleeding body and break- 
ing heart the God-Man gives himself for us. 

"O for this love let rocks and hills 

Their lasting silence b^ak; 
And all harmonious human tongues, 
Their Saviour's praises speak." 

If the cross of Jesus speaks at all it speaks in 
tones of love. In Genesis God works for his 
innocent child ; in Christ he suffers for a guilty 



34 The Divine Opportunity 

one. If the gift is love what can the giver be? 
No one but a God of love could send the loving 
Christ. 

We conclude that this text is a sufficient 
guarantee for the future world. We are 
creatures of the future — our faces are that way 
— as well as men of yesterday. We frankly 
state that were there no revelation of future 
punishment there would be no difficulty in 
reconciling this word to that world. To square 
a revelation with our intellect is one thing; 
for God to make it accord with himself is 
another. Some things may be true that I am 
not able to reconcile. Nothing for which he 
alone is responsible will ever contradict his 
being. 

Our knowledge about the future is meas- 
ured by our information. We hold the same 
relation to the next world that the Jews held 
to the present dispensation. The revelation 
of the future of the wicked is the work of the 
Son of God. Christ reveals the enormity of 
sin as well as the greatness of God's love. The 
most loving life brings the most awful picture 
of the sinner's future. No voice must rise 
above his on the future life. And he taught 
the classes of the future would be the saved 
and the lost. I wish it were not so. I am not 



A Great Definition 35 

delighted at the prospect of the damnation of 
any man ; but I am not able to shape the future 
world by my sympathies. That world must 
conform to something more profound than 
sympathies. If some one can assure us that 
Jesus did not teach the finality of sin, and 
future punishment, we shall be delighted. But 
we cannot read the Master's words without the 
profound conviction that he taught that sin 
shapes itself into finality; that the sin against 
the Holy Spirit is an eternal possibility. The 
sheep and the goats are divided because they 
ought not to be together. The Roman empire 
was not large enough for Paul and Nero. 

There is no difficulty in reconciling this text 
to the future of the saved. For them there 
are revelations of the Divine Being that could 
not here be given. Paul in First Corinthians, 
fifteen and twenty-eight, hints that there is to 
be some other adjustment "when all things 
have been put under his feet." Perchance they 
are to know God without mediation — possibly 
in the same way the Lord knows him. Christ 
is a brother as well as a Saviour. Time has 
not so exhausted the Infinite that eternity will 
have nothing to reveal. 

It is the difficulty of adjusting this text to 
the future of the wicked that perplexes. It 



36 The Divine Opportunity 

• 

may not be possible to so adjust it. But we 
are not to relate ourselves to the future by 
the measure of our mind, or the grasp of our 
knowledge. To man the future has always 
been a matter of faith ; "believe" has everlast- 
ingly been man's duty to God, in reference 
to the future, as well as the highway to the 
Deity. Faith is the ladder on which the soul 
will ever climb Godward. 

In the past God has been represented as 
taking great delight in the act of punishing. 
Such representations are a libel on the Al- 
mighty. The man who is ashamed of the pun- 
ishment he has inflicted on his child has been 
irrational. The man who is not grieved be- 
cause he has to punish knows not how to love. 
To think of God as being constrained, by his 
nature, to punish is one thing; to picture him 
as being delighted is vicious. 

There is some awful future for sin. When 
man has made himself fit only for darkness it 
would be cruel to compel him to dwell in light. 
"And this is the condemnation, . . . men loved 
darkness rather than light." The "condemna- 
tion" is in the "loved," and not in the "dark- 
ness." The deeper the sin, the deeper the 
darkness the sinner seeks and the more he 
hates the light. To bring him into the pres- 



A Great Definition 37 

ence of God would be to do for him what 
forever he has sought to avoid ; that would be 
a form of compulsion the divine nature is not 
equal to. The "far country" is a necessity to 
freedom. God must make provision for his 
children according not only to what they are, 
but what they may become. For every possi- 
bility there must be room. The God who 
created water for the fish, air for the bird's 
wing, and land for the foot of man has a place 
of light for those who "come to the light that 
their deeds may be manifest." He must leave 
a place of darkness for those who "love dark- 
ness rather than light." Light would be a 
worse hell to sin than darkness could ever 
be. To anarchy law is slavery, discord heaven. 
To saints the fires of hell would be harmless. 
To the unregenerated the pearly gates would 
be dark and the streets of gold would be fire. 

Freedom is an eternal possession. We are 
not and never shall be moral slaves while God 
remains what he is. Eternal freedom carries 
with it the possibility of eternal sin. There is 
no reason to believe that either heaven or hell 
will rob a soul of freedom. The walls of 
heaven are not high on purpose to keep men 
in; the gates are never closed. 

We believe the providence of God is now 



38 The Divine Opportunity 

applied to life; but we can neither reconcile 
it with the presence of evil nor the prevalence 
of sorrow. The great things of life are, and 
must be, left to him for reconciliation. In his 
own good time he reconciled the exclusiveness 
of the Jew with the universality of Jesus. I 
cannot reconcile ; I dare not doubt. 

Prove to me that the sinner of the future 
will call for mercy and I will prove to you 
that he will find it. But do not assume that 
suffering is more mighty than the Holy Spirit, 
or that hell is more potent than the cross. 
There is nothing in the nature of sin to indi- 
cate that he who transgresses under the re- 
straint of a better judgment, and the influences 
of the gospel, will ever cease to sin for any 
other reason. 

What the future of the wicked will be is 
matter of revelation ; and, if Jesus be the Son 
of God, sin now, or then, is a far more awful 
thing than our modern thought appreciates. 
What sin will lead to, in suffering and dark- 
ness, I do not know; what the joys of the 
saints are to be I cannot tell. But this text 
is enough for me for time and for eternity, 
with reference to my Father: "God is love." 
If in the future some restless soul, roaming 
through the caverns of despair, shall find an 



A Great Definition 39 

argument that will prove that he who provided 
that place for such as are lost did it in any 
other spirit than love, then the fires of hell 
will cease to burn, memory will refuse to tor- 
ment, and the angels will pity those for whom 
the Father of us all has no compassion. The 
God of Genesis is love; the God of the gos- 
pels is love ; the God of heaven is love ; and 
the God of the "saved" will be the God of 
the "lost." The future holds possibilities of 
reconciling relationships; but it contains no 
chance of successfully contradicting this text: 
"God is love." What God is he was ; what he 
was he is and will forever be, and that is — love. 



THE FIRST THING GOD DID 

"We love, because he first loved us." — I John 
4. 19 (R. V.). 

The history of a sermon is sometimes its 
best introduction. You will follow me better 
if you walk the path I trod. Last Tuesday 
morning, entering my study, thinking of this 
morning service, a casual look through the 
window started a train of thought that led 
to this text. It was a beautiful morning. The 
air was clear, the sky was blue, and beyond 
the hills looked like the sea. The suggestion 
led me to say, "I wish I were by the sea." 
Then, as if some visitor had asked a question, 
there came, "Why do I love the sea? Is it 
because I am, as all other life is, related to it? 
Is the sea the path by which life reached the 
earth? Or, am I related to it by my love?" 
"O," said I to the visitor, "what is the differ- 
ence?" Then, as if I might not put him off, 
came this: "Why do you love at all? Why 
does anybody, everybody, love?" With the 
question came the text : "We love him, because 
he first loved us." "Him" — that cannot be 



The First Thing God Did 41 

right ; did he love us that we might love him ? 
That is business, barter, loving one's self by- 
proxy; and is selfish. Taking up a parallel 
edition of the New Testament, which gives 
the various readings of different Greek manu- 
scripts, I found that the oldest of them do not 
give the personal pronoun "Him" as the ob- 
ject of "We love." So the statement in the 
Revised Version is correct: "We love, be- 
cause he first loved us." The context clearly 
shows that the object of "We love" is "his 
brother." Of human love for human beings 
John is speaking. "Him" takes his place 
among those we love; or, better still, "We 
love" Him by loving others. 

The text is a twofold affirmation — the state- 
ment of a personal and universal fact, and the 
assertion of a sufficient cause. 

Every fact is the child of a cause. Internal 
facts are no exception. Sight is an effect as 
surely as the things we see; the senses are 
results as surely as their objectives are caused. 
Love is an effect, and its supreme cause is God. 
"We love :" from this great fact of human life, 
without discussing method, John leaps to its 
First Cause; as though, in an instant, one 
should be taken from the river's mouth to its 
source, without seeing the country through 



42 The Divine Opportunity 

which it flows. Could we follow any of the 
great facts of our being, and keep the scent, 
we should land at "Him." 

Soon as I repeat the words "We love" it 
is more than probable most of you will think 
of some "grammar," and the first verb you 
learned to conjugate. Do not lose the fact 
in the sound, or turn from the truth because 
the form was a task. For of all the facts of 
human life this is the most sublime: "We 
love." 

I am inclined to believe the first thing we 
do is love. The child certainly loves before 
he talks or walks. Before the babe is con- 
scious of a consciousness he is conscious that 
he loves. Let us stand by the crib of an awak- 
ing child; watch those eyes, as they gaze at 
one and then another, until they rest upon the 
mother. See how the face lights with a smile. 
That smile is more than a recognition, for the 
child knows us all; it shows not only that he 
loves, but that his love is already directed. 
None who have felt the pressure of a pair of 
little arms, or watched with care an infant's 
face, doubts that both child and infant love. 

"We love." That is a fact of consciousness. 
We are conscious of many things that come 
through avenues we can trace; we say it is 



The First Thing God Did 43 

cold, because we feel; we speak of large and 
small, because we see; of melody, or discord, 
because we hear; but "We love" — just because 
we love. It is not because we see — the blind 
love; not because we hear — the deaf love. 
Helen Keller, blind, deaf, and dumb, loves. 
This is not only a fact to, but in, and of, our 
consciousness. It is at once the emotion and 
the motion of ourselves. It is the basis, the 
source, and the alpha of every word we spell 
by living. No fact from without, no matter 
through what avenue it comes, is more certain 
to us than that motion of our nature we de- 
scribe when we say, "We love." 

"We love." This fact is, and always has 
been, the mainspring of human life. Just 
where and when civilization began, history 
does not tell; but its birth was possible only 
because of human love. Every legacy of 
which civilization is custodian is a gift of love. 
Below the materialism of our times is the fact 
of human love. It may not be possible for 
men to love money; but below the struggle 
for wealth is the love of some one, or some- 
thing, that we suppose money to be able to 
satisfy or purchase. Love sharpens the mind 
of the inventor and strengthens the hand of the 
toiler. Love has lit the path of life as with the 



44 The Divine Opportunity 

lamp of day ; by it poverty has been sweetened 
and wealth sanctified. It has sustained men 
in the day of strife, and bound them, as with 
cords of steel, in time of peace. Because men 
have loved they have given time, talents, pos- 
sessions — nay, life itself. The priceless privi- 
leges of our day are the fruits of human love. 
In love for their offspring, and desire for an 
opportunity, the fathers founded this republic. 
In love for their fellows the early preachers 
followed the first settlers into the forests of 
the frontier and laid broad and deep the 
foundations of our national religious life. A 
catalogue of love's achievements would be a 
history of the good things of life since the 
world began. 

"We love." This is the last analysis of hu- 
man life ; about us nothing better is ever said. 
Love assumes many forms and sometimes 
blunders in method, but never in intention. 
The woman who in her anxiety gives the 
wrong medicine to her child does so because 
her overanxious heart beclouds her judgment. 
You recall Paul's eulogy: "Love suffereth 
long, and is kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunt- 
eth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave 
itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not 
provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoic- 



The First Thing God Did 45 

eth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with 
the truth; beareth all things, believeth all 
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 
Love never faileth." It bears the burdens of 
home and nation and does not complain. It 
watches by the bed of pain, and clings to the 
wayward when all others have forsaken him. 
It may hold with an infant's hand, but its grip 
is the grip of fate. It is fragrant as a garden 
of spices and as pure as the morning dew. 
It may shine in the face of a child, the glance 
of a maiden, or the tear of old age, but it is 
as unfailing as the Deity. 

"We love." That is "the greatest thing in 
the world." The wonders of life are not all 
outside of us. The starry heavens have noth- 
ing more marvelous than this fact of human 
life. In the presence of the grave we have 
given our heart to another. In the darkness 
of death we have pledged the fealty of life. 
We have built our circles in the knowledge 
they would be broken; but we built them in 
love, and we love them none the less when 
they are shattered. The growing flower and 
the rolling sphere are marvels, but they are 
simple beside the perseverance of human love. 
This emotion is far beyond all the experiences 
of life, and springs forever fresh from the 



46 The Divine Opportunity 

depths of the soul. It outlives war and hate, 
and shines in the world to-day as fresh as 
the time when first it lit the path of life. The 
things within us are worthy of as patient study 
as the things that are without. The marvels 
of God's handiwork are inside. In the con- 
sciousness that "we love" dwells the most 
marvelous work of God. Of all the wonders 
of creation this is the most wonderful. Mind, 
memory, conscience, love, a constellation beside 
which the Pleiades are small. For to which 
of the worlds hath he ever said, "Let us make 
it in our image"? These internal planets 
swing in orbits that are eternal and widen with 
the rolling years. Onward they sweep, be- 
coming freighted with what it might task an 
angel to carry. Within the span of finite man 
are gathered the greatest wonders of the Al- 
mighty. But of these worlds, that move inside, 
none swing with such majestic splendor as 
this thing we call love. This is the marvel of 
the world. 

We need no one to teach us that we love; 
we are sadly in want of guidance as to whom, 
and how, we shall love ; but love we will. The 
right, the wrong, God, or sin, we love. Whence 
comes this marvel of our humanity? Every 
fact is grounded in a sufficient cause. Where 



The First Thing God Did 47 

shall we find a reason? Can it be that the 
peculiar combination of the substances that 
compose the body are sufficient for this won- 
drous fact of our being? Is it sufficient to 
tell us that through long eons life in blind- 
ness moved toward its final end ? The method 
by which my body was formed is of little mo- 
ment beside the task of finding a cause for 
this marvel of my soul. Evolution may in 
time write the history of my growth, but I 
want to know the source of my being. Whence 
got I this power to love? To what parentage 
does it point? Who breathed on humanity 
with such universal result? Does the method 
by which the body was stood erect, the crani- 
um formed, account for the quality of this 
inner self? I may walk, go awheel, by stage- 
coach or special train, but the method of my 
going is not my mission, my nature, nor my 
source. It will at best but show a choice of 
ways, it is not sufficient for the movement. 
You will find no adequate reason in any theory 
of development. It is not method, but cause, 
we seek. Whence came the thing that is being 
developed? John gives us the only sufficient 
answer for this great fact. Some have drawn 
comparisons between John and Paul, as if the 
latter were more profound than the former. 



48 The Divine Opportunity 

Paul may have had a wider sweep of subjects, 
but he never saw more clearly or deeply than 
did his loving brother. This great theme of 
love was enough for the beloved disciple ; and 
it was he who leaped to its source : "We love, 
because he first loved us." That is the source 
of all love. I care not what its measure, nor 
what its task, that is where it takes its rise. 
"He loved us," and hugging us to his heart he 
left his impress on our being. 

Let us change the subject of our search. 
Whence came the strength the universe dis- 
plays? Who hurled the flaming worlds into 
this limitless abyss? Who built the highways 
adown which they sweep? Who laid the er- 
ratic track along which the comet speeds? 
Who dug the groove the staid old earth keeps 
in on his perpetual march around the sun? 
Who fixed in their eternal order the changing 
seasons of our globe? Who made the sea to 
teem with life and peopled all the fields ? Who 
drove this wondrous life and kept it in its 
course as many countless ages rolled? Who 
shaped the human mind in such fashion that 
any thought that nature has is plain to him 
who reads? Who laid the outlines of that 
mind that will tell you where the comet is, 
though none may see it for half a hundred 



The First Thing God Did 49 

years? Who in the space of a few square 
inches put the power to follow it around its 
course and tell to the fraction of a moment 
when his eyes may watch again its stately 
passing? To all these questions mind insists 
an answer shall be given; and sense will call 
that answer — God. 

Just turn your eyes within. In life you 
loved so early that you know not the time 
when you started. You loved before you rea- 
soned; and you love in spite of it. If your 
reason failed to-day, to-morrow you would 
love. The changing years have not robbed 
you of this power. Your love has been in- 
sulted; your affections have been wounded; 
but the fiber of your being is still described by 
the statement, "We love." The circles you 
built, segment by segment, and rejoiced in 
their completeness, have been broken; but it 
did not break through the fact that "we love." 
"The dead are gone," says the thoughtless 
one; but they are in your mind to-day and 
your love forever. 

"We love ! We love !" O matchless fact of 
mortal life — in spite of all, "we love" ! Drop 
this sentence into any moment of the world's 
existence, in the past or the eternal future, 
and it will be a true description of the inner 



50 The Divine Opportunity 

life of man. Man's capacity to love is far 
greater than his ability to direct his love. It 
is in the direction of his nature that he 
blunders. For his nature he is not respon- 
sible; for its direction he is accountable. The 
prodigal was not responsible for his home, 
but he was guilty for his place. God never 
invites us to turn from our nature, but from 
our evil way. The conscience and the will 
have been enfeebled by the fall, but when man 
left Eden he brought with him his Godlike 
capacity to love. He must learn that lust is 
not love ; that the object of his love will decide 
his experiences, and its better direction will 
bring him to the eternal city ; but, on earth or 
in heaven, for time and for eternity, of him it 
will be forever true, "we love." 

For this great internal world the text gives 
us the cause : "We love, because he first loved 
us." For the beginning of things we turn to 
him; and to him belongs the source of this 
greatest thing in human life. The stream of 
love has its rise in the heart of the Eternal 
God, then onward flows to bless and feed all 
forms of life. If the birds love they love be- 
cause God loves the bird; if a worm loves it 
is for the same reason; and for the fact that 
the angels love there is no other cause. The 



The First Thing God Did 51 

angel may know more of Him "from whom 
all blessings flow," but he knows no other 
source of love in any form than this : "He first 
loved/' When a mother's arms are moved by 
love the child she holds is touched by God. 
When human tears fall on the thorny road 
the wayward tread, the sorrow is the sorrow 
of the Deity. Young men and young women, 
when you smite with cruel blow a mother's 
love you strike at the Eternal. 

It has been said that the text means that he 
loved us before we loved him. Certainly. I 
could take you to the graves where lie the 
silent forms of those of whom that would be 
true with regard to myself. Before I loved 
him. Do you mean that we had no place in 
his love a century ago because we were not 
born? Can we go back to the time when the 
Eternal loved us not? Before Adam made 
love to Eve, or both had loved their child, 
both they and we were loved by him. Before 
God lit the lamp of day or made the stars by 
night to twinkle he loved "us." Before the 
angels — who watched with growing intelli- 
gence the rising order of the worlds — had a 
being, he loved us. They have no priority in 
his love. There is no priority with him. In 
his love before the world was I am. With 



52 The Divine Opportunity 

him I am eternal. From where I stand, back- 
ward his love eternally contains me; my 
awakened consciousness forever looks forward 
to his love. In a deeper sense than time will 
ever realize we are brothers to the Christ. 
There is no time with God. He first loved; 
and in that first emotion of the Deity I had a 
place, and was an object of the first thing that 
he ever did. I am not new to God. I found 
myself but yesterday, but he forever knew 
me. "I have loved thee with an everlasting 
love." Before he drew the plan of his great 
domain, or made the fire mists to roll, he 
loved us. It was the first thing that the Deity 
did. From this one fact has sprung all that 
the centuries have seen. The only answer to 
the universe is man. With no eyes to see, to 
paint were useless; no ears to hear, or fingers 
to create, the possibilities of sound were 
foolish; with no object, to love is impossible, 
even to the Almighty; and to exclude me 
would make the Deity partial. 

Were there others besides us? I do not 
know, I think there were ; but we were there, 
or we never had been here. And if by chance 
it had been possible to steal a march on God, 
and dwell for a little while on one small speck 
in space, I had been here without the power 



The First Thing God Did 53 

to love. Were it possible to have lived with- 
out him, it were not possible to have loved 
without him. God never left himself without 
a witness in the world; he never left himself 
without a witness in me. As my heart goes 
out in love unto another it tells me with a 
certainty beside which the message of the 
stars is doubtful that God loves me. Little, 
sinful? I know but little about that, but my 
heart dances in rapture at the message its 
own power brings me, and in that message I 
dare forever to intrust myself. The first thing 
God did was love me; and he will never 
change. 

Make the text less if you can the better see 
it; and as we throw our arms in faith about 
His feet in whom the Godhead dwells, look 
up into his face and say, "We love him, be- 
cause he first loved us." Lord, save us from 
robbing thee of that we give to others, and 
what thou didst eternally bestow on us ! 



EVERY MAN'S PICTURE 

"Father, I have sinned." — Luke 15. 18. 

Have you ever wondered why everybody 
can find fault with everything? You have, 
of course, noticed that the ability to find fault 
is universal. The disposition to direct others 
is developed quite early in life. I remember 
when a child I was permitted to watch an 
artist paint my father's picture ; he began with 
the middle of the face, and I suggested that 
was not right, he should begin with the feet. 
When told he was not going to put my father's 
feet in the picture I insisted that he ought to 
begin with the top of the head. Most boys 
can inform a mechanic how to do his work, 
and little girls will give their mothers great 
instructions. Everybody knows how a min- 
ister ought to preach, and most ministers know 
how other people should live. Why is this a 
universal gift? There must be some great 
reason for this common heritage. I have some- 
times thought it was given us so we might 



Every Man's Picture 55 

see our faults when others wore them. No 
temperance sermon equals in power the stag- 
gering of a drunken man. Did you ever see 
one? That is how you would look. Did you 
ever see a man in a passion that robbed him 
of reason ? There you are when passion mas- 
ters you. Were you ever shocked at the boy's 
disregard of his mother's love? That is what 
it will look like to others when you go to doing 
the same thing. 

This parable is intended to show us our- 
selves. Do you remember that story, Titbot- 
tom's Spectacles, by George William Curtis? 
They had the peculiar quality of showing 
everything to the wearer as it really was. He 
had been disappointed so many times when he 
had looked at people through these glasses 
that he decided if he should ever fall in love 
with a girl he would not look at her through 
them. One day, when calling on the girl he 
loved, the impulse to look at her through his 
spectacles became irresistible. She was stand- 
ing before a mirror, and as he put on his 
glasses she fainted and he saw — himself. In 
great disgust he fled the house, never to re- 
turn. He had seen himself and was ashamed. 
This parable is both a mirror and a pair of 
glasses; let us turn to it for a sight of our- 



56 The Divine Opportunity 

selves as He saw us who sees with the. clear- 
ness of truth and the scrutiny of God. 

The very simple things I am going to say 
about this prodigal are true of you and me. 
If I misrepresent you stop me at once. It is 
the truth we want; nothing but that will help 
us. It was for us Christ spoke this parable. 
He did nothing for his day only, save as all 
days are his. In this parable Christ paints 
the picture of the race ; here is the picture of 
us all. First of all, this young man sinned 
by leaving home. When he first left I do not 
know. How long he had been gone before 
he started it would be impossible to say. He 
left home in heart long before his journey be- 
gan. It is certain that in heart and fact he 
left the old homestead and "took his journey 
into a far country." In what sense is that like 
me, or I like that? You have left your Fa- 
ther's house and gone away from God. Do you 
doubt that statement? Let us see: Suppose 
the church was warmed by the use of stoves, 
instead of the present arrangement, and the 
temperature outside was below zero. As we 
come into the church we gather round the 
stove, and holding our hands toward it say, 
"My, how cold it is outside !" In a little while 
we get warmer and move away from the stove. 



Every Man's Picture 57 

Now, we have only to have a room large 
enough, and move far enough away from that 
stove, to freeze to death. 

When I was but a boy and had just joined 
the church a gray-haired old man, who should 
have known better, told me I should grow 
out of that nonsense. It annoyed me to think 
that what I had been taught was for life might 
be only for children. Then I remembered that 
my mother did not seem to have grown out 
of it; that my father was still satisfied with 
the old truths that I had just yielded to. One 
day I said to him, "Tell me, how did the story 
of Christ's love affect you when you were a 
boy?" "O," said he, with a laugh, "I believed 
it, of course, and thought it was good of him 
to die for me ; but I have learned better now." 

I was but a boy at that time, but I saw, 
as if I had seen it enacted as this story 
shows it, the prodigal was now gray-headed, 
and sneering at a little boy for trying to live 
a Christian life, and yet he looked back to the 
time when the old, old story was new and true 
to him. And I said, "What a long way from 
home you must be, sir!" "Why?" said he. 
"O, to believe you never had one." After 
that he let me alone ; and since I have learned 
more of what a look expresses, and remem- 



58 The Divine Opportunity 

bered his face, I know that was a home thrust 
to the old man. 

Brother, the fire in the stove is burning; 
why are you so cold? Because you have left 
the fire. Men talk about the old gospel. There 
is no other kind. The gospel is the same in 
every age. God has not changed; Christ is 
still the Saviour of men ; the Holy Spirit still 
strives in the same way ; the story of the love 
of Christ is yet charming millions. Why not 
you? You have gone away. You remember 
that passage in Hebrews : "We ought to give 
the more earnest heed to the things we have 
heard, lest at any time we should let them slip." 
The Revised Version is clearer: "Lest haply 
we drift away from them." God is not drift- 
ing; Calvary is immovable; heaven is in no 
danger of falling. But how we drift! How 
swiftly the years take us from the impressions 
of childhood! You will have to get back to 
childhood to find God. Jesus said, "Except 
ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall 
in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven" 
(R. V.). You must get back to where you 
started from, not where Adam started from. 
You must "turn" and go home. 

One great preacher said, "The world is born 
with its back on God." Jesus never so taught. 



Every Man's Picture 59 

The world turns its back on God. The truths 
that used to touch and charm us have lost their 
power over us because we have departed from 
them. We have left the home on whose hearth- 
stone the fire ever glows. The sin that first 
we committed made us blush. O, we have 
got over that now ; and we never stop to ask 
why we have got over it. What you to-day 
do so unblushingly is still crimsoning the 
cheeks of those who are just starting from 
home. 

The truth is the same, my brother. It does 
not affect you in the same way, because "he 
took his journey into a far country." Do not 
talk to me about hell. All I want to know is, 
is there room? The man whose face is that 
way — to the left — does not get to the same 
place as the man whose face is this way — 
to the right — in the moral world. If you go 
far enough west you will be east ; but we are 
on a globe. In morals we deal with straight 
lines. Sin is a straight line away from God, 
and time will make a worse hell than any 
parable ever had the power to picture. Don't 
you be frightened about hell, my brother; go 
on ! One by one the truths of God are losing 
their influence over you ; go on ! One by one 
your scruples are dying out ; go on ! One by 



60 The Divine Opportunity 

one praying people are being discouraged 
about you ; go on ! You are not yet fifty, but 
you have rejected more gospel invitations 
than would have saved the world had they 
been accepted; go on! One by one your life 
is taking on additional sins, they do not seem 
to burden you; go on! The door of home, 
the garden gate, you no longer see; go on! 
You have lost sight of the curling smoke from 
the chimney of the Father's house; go on! 
The light that flames in God's great Book 
looks rather dim ; go on ! You are even won- 
dering if your godly mother was not mistaken ; 
go on! One by one the stars are fading 
from your heaven ; go on ! Eternal day is at 
your back, eternal night is right ahead; go 
on ! Go on ! But remember, it is you who are 
going. Don't blame God, neither the church. 
We are none too good, I know, but we have 
brought you enough gospel to have saved you 
a thousand times if you would. Men still 
stand beside the Christ, and more people weep 
over the wickedness of our cities to-day than 
ever wept over them before; but don't you 
mind that, go right on. Go on till you grow 
gray, and the gray turns to white, and the 
white is carried to the grave, and then go on. 
Somewhere in that far country you have 



Every Man's Picture 6i 

reached, and to which still you go, there is 
darkness that you will feel, and the worm that 
never dies, lives. You will find them all; go 
on ! But remember it is you who move. Time 
and direction is all that it needs to make hell. 
Eternity is long and the universe is large. Do 
not think of yourself as a fixture and every- 
thing else as moving. You know the things 
of God are sure. You do the going. "He 
took his journey into a far country." 

The second thing we notice is, he sinned by 
wasting his substance. The word refers to 
the winnowing of wheat, and seems to indicate 
that the grain was scattered in a way that 
should be true only of the chaff. How he 
made the money fly! and when it was gone 
he had nothing to show for what he had spent, 
no return for all he had owned. This is a 
thought that Jesus evidently intended to em- 
phasize, for in the next chapter we are told 
that, "He said also unto his disciples, There 
was a certain rich man, which had a steward ; 
and the same was accused unto him that he 
had wasted his goods." If you wish to see the 
wickedness of waste note how God shuns it. 
Not a grain of sand in all this world could 
you put out of space. The conservation of 
energy, which science recognizes to be the 



62 The Divine Opportunity 

law of life, is God's ever-present warning 
against waste. Go to the top of the steeple 
of your church, cast down a stone; in its fall 
it will generate as much energy as, could you 
gather it up, would lift the stone back to the 
place from which you started it. In the world 
where God controls there is no waste ; but how 
much in that world where men are responsi- 
ble! Can you tell how much he wasted? 
"Spent all." You may not have reached that 
place, but you are approaching it. Should 
you go into eternity to-night how much would 
you take with you as a result of your years 
of life? Do not measure your life by the years 
you have spent, but by the result you have 
achieved. Not the years you have spent, but 
what they have brought you, will be the meas- 
ure of your success. What have the years 
brought you in real return ? Have you squan- 
dered the years, that are more precious than 
rubies, or have they brought you intrinsic 
return ? 

You have gifts, powers of mind. What have 
you done with them? Did you suppose they 
were given you for burial, to hide in a nap- 
kin? What issue has come to you, and to the 
world, as a result of the powers God gave 
you? Think you that you can shirk responsi- 



Every Man's Picture 63 

bility for the use of your time and the powers 
of your mind? 

You have a heart that can — nay, must — 
love. What has that brought you in everlast- 
ing gain? How much has that built into the 
fabric of your being? Have you wasted it 
on the little flimsy, fleeting nothings? Have 
you saved it by using it for others, or wasted 
it on silly self? 

Your money must be measured by the same 
rule. Both you and yours must come under 
the law that to waste is to suffer, and to give 
without adequate return is to waste one's 
substance. 

What a sight the moral world presents! 
The sky line looks like a modern city, ragged 
and broken. In God's church how many tal- 
ents wasted! In life how many years gone 
and no return! Your opportunities an angel 
might covet, but you scatter them as the prodi- 
gal did his pence. 

You recall that song of Mr. Sankey's "Must 
I go and empty-handed?" Do you remember 
the incident over which it was written? At 
the age of twenty-two a young man was dying. 
He was trusting Christ for salvation, and was 
near the other world. His mother, thinking 
him asleep, was pacing to and fro in the hall, 



64 The Divine Opportunity 

when she heard him say, "Lost ! Lost ! Lost !" 
Hurrying to his side she said, "Nay, my son, 
you have not lost your confidence in Christ, 
have you?" "No, mother/' was his reply, 
"but I have lost my life." 

"O, the years in sin I've wasted! 

Could I but recall them now, 
I would give them all to Jesus, 
At his feet I'd gladly bow." 

Life's opportunities will never come again. 
A lost soul is redeemable, but for a lost life 
there is no redemption. The prodigal was pen- 
niless after his forgiveness. All that the father 
had was the elder brother's. God has no Cal- 
vary that redeems lost opportunities. It is 
like the repentance of Esau, which finds no 
place though sought in tears. God save us 
from knowing by experience what it means 
to waste one's substance! 

In conclusion, note, not only our sins, but 
even our blunders, are here set forth in vivid 
colors, that we may see them and be wise. 
When the last shekel had been changed and 
the last farthing was gone he was hungry 
and began to be in want. Pause here a mo- 
ment, and think. You will find this was the 
time and place from which to go home. It 



Every Man's Picture 65 

is scarcely credible that he could have come 
to this place without thinking of his home of 
plenty. That was the time to go home. Do 
you say, When shall I seek God ? Just as soon 
as you know you are needy. When you come 
to the place where want is before you, and 
you have no way of meeting it, that is the 
time to seek your Father's house. It was a 
slight on his father's love that he did not at 
once seek his father's face and table ; but, no, 
he must redeem himself. So in his deep need 
he turned in the wrong direction, and " joined 
himself" — glued himself on — "to a citizen of 
that country," and he sent him into his fields 
to feed swine. It is ever thus with men. We 
seem instinctively to turn in the wrong direc- 
tion, as an animal instinctively turns in the 
right. Men still turn to darkness for light, 
to sin for salvation. We seek in the far coun- 
try what nothing but the Father's house can 
give. Did you ever follow this poor boy in 
that blunder? Do you remember when you 
were awakened to the need of a new life, how 
you started by an appeal to your own strength ? 
You would cut off this or that habit — an ap- 
peal to the citizen of the far country. And 
with you, as with him, it ended in a deeper 
degradation. 



66 The Divine Opportunity 

It was awfully mean in Peter to deny; but 
had he not gone out to weep, how much worse 
the crime had been ! It is bad enough to leave 
home ! to persevere in getting away from home 
is sinful to a degree that cannot be overstated. 
To squander one's substance, to scatter what 
is grain as though it was chaff, to spend one's 
days, possessions, and powers, and find no re- 
turn, is as wicked as to leave home; but 
there is no sin that for strange folly, refined 
imbecility, equals that act of sinful man when 
in the time of his deepest need he turns in the 
wrong direction and seeks help from the place 
where he found ruin, and food where he 
found nothing but famine. If you have turned 
in the wrong direction, gone to the wrong 
citizen for help, expect a deeper need with no 
suggestion of relief; for while he would have 
been glad to "have filled his belly with the 
husks that the swine did eat," no man gave 
him even that. Listen to your hungry soul, 
my brother. Obey those mighty impulses that 
are within. The Father's house is still stand- 
ing; the door is wide open; the "best robe" 
is hanging in its old place. The Father's kiss 
is in his heart, and waits to blossom on his 
lips and fill your soul with forgiveness and 
heaven with music. Come home — home. 



WHEN IS A MAN HIMSELF? 

"But when he came to himself." — Luke 15. 17 
(R. V.). 

One day I sat on the seashore watching a 
friend paint a "marine." It was one of those 
beautiful days when the air is so clear that 
the blue of the sky is lost in the deeper blue 
of the sea; when they seem so to blend that 
the horizon is lost in the deep vaults of space, 
and one seems to be looking out into the in- 
finite depths as he gazes seaward. Occasionally 
my friend stepped back from the easel to view 
his work. Once he said, "How do you like 
it?" "O," I answered, "it is all sea or all 
sky, just whichever you wish." He smiled 
and rubbed in more color, making the lower 
part a little darker than the rest; when the 
color effect pleased him he finally said, "Well, 
how is that?" "The beauty of that picture is 
that either way up will be right; one way it 
will be all sea, the other it will all be sky," I 
answered. He took a fine brush and, filling it 
with color, deftly drew it across the picture; 
and that one stroke made it sea below and 



68 The Divine Opportunity 

sky above. Now the deep-bosomed sea and 
the calm vaulted sky were separated the one 
from the other; and the one picture showed 
not only both, but where each began. That 
was the master stroke of the picture. 

If we may compare one part of this parable 
with the other the text is among the most tell- 
ing; it certainly is the stroke that divides the 
below from the above, the backward from the 
forward. Let us use the text as a platform 
for our feet, and looking in one direction we 
shall see the folly, lunacy, and madness of sin ; 
and in the other direction we shall see the 
marks of a sensible self, a moral sanity, the 
rationality of a return to God. 

From this point backward the prodigal's 
relation to his father was without the least 
recognition of those laws of filial life that are 
universal in their application. Duty to his 
father ! That had never dawned on him. His 
impatience for a division of the inheritance 
was both hasty and impertinent. This lad 
wanted his money more than he desired his 
father. He sought, therefore, in his father's 
lifetime, what the law allowed him at his fa- 
ther's death. His father was nothing to him 
beside the portion of goods. He had no eye 
for the wealth of his father's heart. His fa- 



When Is a Man Himself? 69 

ther was merely a channel through which 
things came for his pleasure. Even the favor 
he asked was an insult and a cruel wound. In 
his relation to home he did not put a solitary 
action on a natural relationship. His father 
was a hindrance to what the law would allow. 
The father was in his way. 

To some the Deity is a burden. What a 
wealth of pleasure they might have if God 
were dead ! What a rampage the world would 
go on if from his home the Father would with- 
draw ! To sin, God is in the way — a barrier, 
not a parent; a hindrance, not a helper; a 
withholder not a giver. What an estimate of 
home! A good place to start from, but no 
place to stay. Tell him, "There is no place 
like home," and it would be a joke. The place 
where he was born, the old orchard where he 
played as a child, all the associations of boy- 
hood had no charms for him. He was like an 
seolian harp without strings. Nature had no 
basis of appeal that affected him. He left 
with glad heart and merry step, and shed not 
a tear at his going. God bless the boy who 
when his trunk is in the wagon runs upstairs 
to look into his own room once more, and, 
taking his mother in his arms, says nothing, 
because his heart is too full ! God pity the boy 



70 The Divine Opportunity 

who has no sentiment about home! He is 
lacking in those qualities that make a man 
complete in moral fiber. He is beside himself. 
Sin is the most unnatural thing in the world. 
That is what makes it sin. 

To him the father's loss never appealed. 
Those holy relations that sustain a parent 
through the toil of years ; and lead him to give 
himself, and offer life for his children; he never 
saw they existed ; much less related himself by 
them. This father's attitude to his sons is one 
of the beauties of literature, and was so fa- 
therlike that it enables him to stand as a repre- 
sentative of God. What shall be said of that 
attitude that disregards what is eternal as the 
Deity and universal as the race? How shall 
we designate that outlook on life that leaves 
the Father out — that ignores God? It is the 
act of moral madness. The whole moral being 
is out of tune with existing laws — laws that 
God could only change by changing himself 
and the very fiber of our being. What shall 
be said of the man whose attitude to his Fa- 
ther consists of asking favors, whose whole 
relation to God is the reception of things? 
How much they miss whose eyes are closed 
to the love of home, and find it nothing but a 
place from which to start for the "far coun- 



When Is a Man Himself? 71 

try" ! Young men, the times you are looking 
forward to, that leave out the priceless pres- 
ence of the Father, are the times that will 
bring you to want. The drastic folly of sin 
that finds no place in its outlook for the 
greatest fact in the universe — the Father! 

Another piece of madness is exhibited in 
the handling of his "goods." He did not even 
barter, nor become a trader — simply a spender. 
All he had to do, after the first week, was to 
count and calculate, then he would know how 
long he could keep the pace; but he did not 
even have the sense for that. He supposed 
his bag could never be emptied ; no, he did not 
suppose anything, he did not have the sense to. 
He just made the money fly. He spent with- 
out making. Young men, do not try that; it 
does not take long to spend a fortune in 
health, ability, or brains. You can squander 
much faster than you can gather; and sin 
"scattereth abroad/' It is easier to lose than 
to find, to destroy than to make. What an ap- 
plication to the great moral world! How 
many musicians have been born that sin has 
spoiled; how many fine voices it has hushed; 
how many orators it has silenced; how much 
heart power it has robbed of a right objective ! 
Spending ends; man may have Godlike pow- 



J2 The Divine Opportunity 

ers, but they are finite; unless improved they 
waste. No man is so rich in moral qualities 
or powers but that if he keeps on spending he 
will come to the "spent all" of the prodigal. 

Sin does not have even business sense. It 
is a foolish squandering in a foolish way. Im- 
becility! "And when he had spent all, there 
arose a mighty famine in that land." Did you 
ever stop to think of the country sin leads to? 
Sin is the road to famine and want— a place 
where desire not being dead finds no objec- 
tives ; no food for the moral nature, no money 
with which to buy, and nothing for sale; a 
land of waste, poverty, and paupery; on its 
fields no dew from heaven falls ; barren, bleak, 
and bare ; the swine are the only creatures that 
have plenty. The sinner by nature cannot 
feed on swine's food nor swine's flesh. The 
vices the sinner feeds will never feed him. 
He may feed vices, but he never becomes one ; 
he may tend swine, but he remains a man. It 
is a barren country to which the sinner goes; 
that "far country" and hell are synonyms. 

Note the absence of self-interest in the 
prodigal's action — "when he began to be in 
want." An animal instinctively turns in the 
direction of provision; and where the beast 
has once known plenty, that is the place to 



When Is a Man Himself? 73 

which he turns. This boy, with the history of 
home in his memory, and the ruin of the "far 
country" in his present want, did not have the 
animal sense to go home. In nature want in- 
stinctively turns in the direction of provision. 
In the fall of the year I have watched the little 
fish, in unbroken files, following the shores of 
the bay toward the waters where ice is not 
formed in the winter months. The little 
blackbirds fly southward before the winter 
comes; unerringly they turn to the land of 
sunshine, where their needs will be supplied. 
See the folly of sin : in the hour of its deepest 
need it turns in the wrong direction — "And 
he went and joined himself to a citizen of that 
country." He clings with the tenacity of folly 
to the wrong citizen. Sin is never right; it 
never does the right thing at the right time. 
At the swine trough he had no higher ambi- 
tion than to fill his stomach. In every action, 
thus far, he can be described no better than to 
say, he was beside himself — a moral madman. 
Sin is never to the sinner's interest. Sin is 
the epitome of folly, the acme of disordered 
reason. Well might the wise man say, "Mad- 
ness is in their heart while they live." 

Now look in the other direction. Let us 
note the marks of normal self, the badges of 



74 The Divine Opportunity 

moral rationality. There is even a sublime 
juxtaposition in the facts to which now we 
turn. They are wondrously related, as well as 
gloriously rational. 

"But when he came to himself he said, 
How many hired servants of my father's have 
bread enough and to spare." The first mark 
of returning sanity is a recognition of the in- 
herent goodness of his father. He sees, for 
the first time, the goodness that gleams in the 
ordinary provision of life. This thought ap- 
plied to some theology dooms it. Below 
"power," above "government," wider than 
"justice," throbs the heart of God the Father. 
He is greater than his ability, larger than his 
methods, and infinitely more than any balances 
he may establish. His attributes are but a 
partial expression of himself. The last word 
spoken for God must be spoken by the heart of 
God. And that is a spring of everlasting love. 
The menials in his house have lavish provision 
made for them, and not one of his creatures 
for whose needs there is not a superabundance. 
It means something that more grain grows 
than is needed, more fruit ripens than is gath- 
ered. "Bread and to spare" is the divine or- 
der, and is a constant proclamation of the ever- 
lasting goodness of God. And when "this my 



When Is a Man Himself? 75 

son" returns God is not false to himself be- 
cause his son has been untrue to him and to 
his own interests. Put yourself beside your 
first thought of God, word it as you will, its 
sanity will be measured by its recognition of 
his goodness. Beholding the native goodness 
of the Father is rationality, according to this 
parable, and is the first mark of moral sanity. 

A recognition of his need and a discovery of 
its meaning is the second mark of moral 
lucidity — "And I perish with hunger." He 
knew he had been hungry often, and for long 
time, but he now discovers its meaning. "I 
perish" — that is what the unsatisfied want of 
the soul means. H-u-n-g-e-r spells Perish. 
You know you are in want, but saneness recog- 
nizes its meaning. Want can have but one of 
two issues : it will find and revel in abundance, 
or it will shrink and shrivel the soul till it 
perish. Speculate as you wish about what it 
means to perish. Enough for me to see the 
moral nature shrink, and its fiber become 
flabby and loosely adhere to the moral frame, 
till all strength is gone and the man perishes 
for want of that which is found in plenty in 
the Father's house. It is not particularly 
rational for you to know you are a sinner — 
fools may know that; but have you discov- 



76 The Divine Opportunity 

ered the termination of sin? Are you satis- 
fied with the prospect? Can you see yourself 
a living moral skeleton, growing weaker as 
the years go by, until the moral blood chills 
and the moral heart ceases its throbbing, and 
you fall among the moral imbeciles who died 
for lack of bread, and would not know that in 
the Father's house there was "bread and to 
spare" ? It is not enough to mark you sane to 
know you are in need. Has it dawned on you 
that you are in the act and process of perish- 
ing, that you are at the door of spiritual death, 
and that nothing but the Father's plenty will 
save you from spiritual suicide? 

A sound moral sense puts things in daring 
relations. The plenty of the Father's house is 
coupled with the soul's needs. "Bread and to 
spare, and perish with hunger" — this is the 
inspiration of moral sanity. Daring indeed is 
the psalmist's statement, "I am poor and 
needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me." It 
is not dependent upon logic, but it is pro- 
foundly true to reality. "I need a Southland," 
says the little bird, "therefore God has one for 
me." God had never made it possible for a 
soul to want unless he had a storehouse of 
supply. Moral sanity is daring ; its very needs 
are its inspiration. The only rational thing 



When Is a Man Himself? 77 

for a hungry creature to do is to go to the 
place of abundance. An animal will go to the 
place of plenty. 

In times when terror reigns and men by in- 
stinct act; when greed has passed the bearing 
point, and an outraged public, like a wild herd, 
starts for vengeance, its instincts are almost 
unerring. Woe betide the men who have 
dammed the stream of plenty into stagnant 
lakes, when indignation makes a highway of 
the river's bed to pull down the dam and turn 
the world's product into normal channels once 
again ! Its actions are unlawful, but they are 
profoundly rational. 

Here the instinct, animal and moral, stirs 
within the man, firing every fiber of his 
being to this great resolve: "I will arise 
and go to my father" — "I/' ragged, ruined, 
dying, will go to my father. Again the 
blessed daring of moral sanity: "I" at 
whom a swineherder scoffs; "I" who have 
"joined" myself to the wrong citizen ; "I" who, 
through my folly, am now engaged in feeding 
swine ; "I" who was dead to, while enshrined 
by, a father's love — "I will." Now he is at the 
very core of himself, and for the first time 
turns in the way of his highest good. It was 
this "will" that had led him from home in a 



78 The Divine Opportunity 

moral madness ; had driven him in his reckless 
extravagance; fastened him to the wrong 
citizen, in the wrong country. But now he 
reaches the sublimity of self-assertion. Be- 
fore, self had been a toy, a thing upon a cur- 
rent; now he comes to himself and says, "I 
will." But your body is weak — "I will arise." 
It is a long way — "I will arise and go." When 
one comes thus to himself, though hell be be- 
tween him and his Father he will cross it. 
Nothing in the moral world equals the soul's 
"I -will" save the "I will" of the Almighty. 
Man is never more himself than when, at the 
verge of moral ruin, with all apparently 
against him, under the wreck of life and the 
ruin of his manhood, he asserts his Godlike 
nature in this: "I will arise and go to my 
Father." 

Note again the relationship of his thought. 
When the "I" is normal, with the unerring in- 
stinct of the migratory bird, or a shaft of 
truth hurled by inspiration, it goes directly to 
its normal place and links itself in its need to 
the Father and his plenty. In this relationship 
and resolve the self sounds the depths of its 
being and finds the height of its possibilities. 

In conclusion, notice the personal confession 
of guilt. He might have come asking, "Fa- 



When Is a Man Himself? 79 

ther, why was I born with the power to stay, 
or go away from, home ? Who made me thus ? 
Am I to blame? Some think it abundant ex- 
cuse for sin that they are children of Adam. 
Away with such moral twaddle! The only 
rationality that will square itself with this 
parable of picture and fact is a supreme per- 
sonal assumption of all the guilt of one's own 
life. It needs not to be said that the Father is 
all right, and no fault can be found with the 
home. He who is without the power to leave 
is without the capacity to enjoy his home. 
The foolish, sinful thing is the awful twist of 
the will of this being we call "I." It is the 
self that brings discord into nature's anthem. 
It is "I" that brings chaos out of order and 
succeeds in making myself a sinner in the 
sight of the universe and before my Father. 

The great mark of spiritual sanity is "He 
arose, and came to his father." The supreme 
test of all resolve is action. A resolve whis- 
pered to a friend or shouted at the stupid 
swine, "I will" may sound good, but its value 
is in this : "He arose, and came to his father." 
Nothing is said about the journey home; all 
journeys homeward are as personal as sin is 
personal. But he came to his father. The 
last test of moral sanity is location. Do you 



80 The Divine Opportunity 

abide in the far country, talking about the 
plenty of the Father's house ? Have you gone 
so far as to recognize your personal responsi- 
bility for your sin ? You may have done that, 
and said a thousand times "I will," but until 
you can say, 

"I came to Jesus as I was, 

Weary, and worn, and sad; 
I found in him a resting place, 
And he hath made me glad" — 

until you have felt the pressure of the Father's 
arms about your neck and the impress of his 
kiss upon your cheek; until you are sur- 
rounded by those who rejoice with the Father 
that "This my son was dead and is alive again, 
was lost and is found," you have no certificate 
to a normal moral self. A return to sanity of 
self is marked by a return to one's right place 
in the Father's house, ringed, robed, and shod, 
the object of the Father's joy. And all that 
goes before but adds to the sadness of the case, 
unless it leads to the final resting place of 
every soul — the Father's home and the Fa- 
ther's heart. Every soul that has come to 
himself has come to his God. 



THE SUICIDE OF FEAR 

[Preached to the New York East Conference at South 
Norwalk.] 

"Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for 
the oxen stumbled." — i Chron. 13. 9. 

This incident brings before us one of the 
vicissitudes of the ark of God. It had rested 
for two or three generations at the house of 
Abinadab, and now David would bring it to 
the capital of the nation. A new cart is built, 
on which the ark is placed ; positions of honor 
are given the sons of Abinadab; Ahio leads 
the oxen, and Uzza walks beside the ark. 
Near the threshing floor of Chidon the oxen 
stumble, the ark trembles, and "Uzza put forth 
his hand to hold the ark ;" for which act "the 
anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, 
and he smote him, because he put his hand to 
the ark : and there he died before God." This 
incident shows many sides of human nature, 
and preaches many living lessons, two of 
which we bring to your attention. 

1. The Mobility of God's Shrine. 

Science may not be able to locate God; reli- 
gion does. In some sense, mysterious but real, 



82 The Divine Opportunity 

the ark was God's dwelling place. It was not 
the wood, nor the gold that overlaid it, that 
caused Dagon to fall and break in fragments 
in his own temple. It was not the priests, nor 
the ark they carried, that divided the waters 
and held them in check till the host passed 
over; it was the Presence. Within was the 
covenant, also the law ; but between the cheru- 
bim there dwelt the Presence of Him whose 
shining is the salvation of his people. God is 
not everywhere in the same sense. He is not 
in a saloon as he is in a church ; not in a tree 
as he is in the hearts of those who love him. 

You will find the travels of the ark very 
interesting reading; and you will remember 
it was built to be carried. It abode in many 
places but remained in none. In the original 
plan it was built for migration, and its home 
was with a moving host. Revelation first lo- 
cates God in a changing world — changing 
because he is there. Changelessness is the 
first law of his being, mobility the first law of 
his manifestation. Apply this thought to 
history. 

From whence did the divine move to that 
perception of the "father of the faithful and 
the friend of God" that we know as mono- 
theism? Where did Abraham find material 



The Suicide of Fear 83 

out of which to build the most sublime con- 
ception known to man till Jesus came ? From 
among the many deities of men there moved 
into his mind, and took up its abode, the idea 
of one God. This one act of mind, that placed 
the Deity above all gods, is the greatest single 
achievement, and the richest gift to human life, 
that was ever made by mortal man. In an- 
swer to this man's faith God came to dwell in 
his poor heart, and dwelling made him great. 
But the conception made this man the first 
of the pilgrim fathers ; and a stranger he dwelt 
in tents in a land that God had already given 
him. From then till now the conception has 
compelled the movement of all with whom it 
dwelt. The restlessness of civilized peoples 
is neither a freak nor a sin. The names by 
which he has been known have changed from 
Power to Love, and now Christians call him 
Father. 

Did the Chaldean empire fall because the 
people failed to follow? Did Egyptian civili- 
zation rot because it was a stationary thing? 
What made the Jews the foremost people of 
their times ? The presence of the Deity. What 
robbed them of the world's religious leader- 
ship ? When he who dwelt in symbols old had 
veiled himself in human flesh, and all the full- 



84 The Divine Opportunity 

ness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Christ, 
foolish, blind, and sinful they refused to follow 
him. 

"Art thou greater than our father Abra- 
ham ?" He who believes that God is at his 
best in human thought and life is essentially 
a Jew, and the marching host will leave him in 
the rear. God is not confined in thoughts the 
centuries have petrified, but in living, throb- 
bing, vital being. What made Luther the re- 
former of his times ? He took a step forward. 
That is all. He did not lose his bigotry, but 
he moved. What made Wesley the leader of 
his times? He took the resting ark upon his 
shoulders and carried it among the common 
people. When we cease to move with the ark 
we must be content to remain behind without 
it, because God's shrine is always a moving 
thing. A civilization that does not change 
can never hold the Deity. The crowning glory 
of any people is that they carry God ; and when 
with him they cease to move, they simply wait 
the undertaker known as Years. 

Apply the thought to personal experience. 
Who will undertake to prove that God does not 
embark with every soul that starts out on the 
sea of life? "This is the light that lighteth 
every man coming into the world." Human 



The Suicide of Fear 85 

life is made on the movable plan. Have you 
ever awoke in the morning to find new things 
on the horizon? If your experience has been 
healthy it has been changing ; all living things 
change. Have you ever been afraid that it 
was the Presence that had changed because 
your thought was different? When you put 
your experience to-day beside that of ten years 
ago and find they are so much unlike each 
other, does it startle you? 

When I was a little boy we lived in a house 
before which the open fields, to vision, ended 
in the summit of a sloping hill. I knew that 
if I lived to be a man I should need a house 
in which to live, and decided to build it at 
the top of that hill. These reasons appealed 
to my childish mind ; at the top of the hill the 
sky touched the ground, so that two ends and 
a side would build a house and I could use 
the sky for a roof. I did not see just how 
I should be able to catch the rain water — that 
was how we did — but I doubted not that I 
could make a hole through the roof and so 
save the rain. I built my "castle in Spain" a 
great many times on the top of that hill. When 
I was big enough to climb a fence I one day 
stole away from home and went to see my 
future dwelling place, and in my going lost 



86 The Divine Opportunity 

my building site. I found the sky did not 
touch this hill at all, but it touched one so far 
away that I was afraid to venture such a dis- 
tance from home. I decided to build my 
house on the farther hill; I was bound to 
build my house where I could use the sky for 
a roof. That was the first time that life shot 
the arrow of fact far beyond my reach. I have 
climbed many a hill since then, in the certain 
thought that on its summit I should find earth 
and sky in one embrace, only to be disap- 
pointed at the top, though I had been blessed 
in my climbing. How many times have you 
climbed the steeps of thought, to the place 
where earth and heaven meet, to find the end 
of your journey was but a vantage ground to 
vision? Have you ever felt that when you 
reached that height you would have the sky 
for covering, and building there your house 
you would abide, but when you reached the 
crest the sky was just as far away? Have 
you ever sighed for settledness of thought? 
Brother, it is the Presence that is settled. That 
never leaves; but the ark moves. If your 
thought be healthy it changes. If your ex- 
perience be real it is alive; if it be living it 
is growing, which is another word for going; 
if God be in it it is a movable ark. 



The Suicide of Fear 87 

I have never yet found a hill high enough 
to reach the heavens ; but I love the earth none 
the less, and I know the heavens are yonder 
though I have not touched them. How many 
times thought disappoints for want of finality. 
With most of us it is a necessity to happiness 
that the heavens shall grovel in the dust; we 
forget that nothing could be as great a curse 
to man as to find the end of truth. The 
grandeur of the sky is in the fact that you 
cannot reach it. The majesty of truth gives 
infinite possibilities to life. Are you afraid 
for a movable God? Is movement synony- 
mous with uncertainty ? Think you God could 
not dwell in an ark that would tremble ? Is it 
impossible for him to be enshrined in a chang- 
ing idea of right ? Do you find your safety in 
a stable, immovable ark? Then you must 
find another Bible; that Book will make you 
foot-weary if you will keep up with the migra- 
tions of the Almighty. Become a Moham- 
medan, for the Christian's path is from "glory 
to glory." The highest peak your feet have 
rested on is but a footing for a higher flight. 
Afraid of movement! Afraid of change! 
Then your faith is in things, thoughts, not 
their objectives; better rest it on the Presence 
and let it move with Him. If you must fear 



88 The Divine Opportunity 

anything, fear the changeless — the changeless 
thought, the changeless creed, the changeless 
life; movement is the only proof we have of 
life. Be afraid of stagnation, but let the river 
of life flow on. A child that does not grow 
is diseased, and is not an exponent of health. 
A changing Christian experience is the only 
rational thing for God's people. 

Abraham was the end of God to the Jew. 
Let us ask it reverently : Is the cross the sum- 
mit of the Deity to you? When rightly seen 
Calvary is God's great tower, reared on the 
"skull" of a little world, from which to view 
the endless country that lies beyond. The 
Deity is never measured, not even by the 
cross. That is the measure of our humanity 
and sin, as great an exhibition of his love as 
life could give. Remember, it is an exhibition, 
not an exhausting, of Love. The cross is the 
gate, not the goal of life. 

II. Fear Kills God's Men, Not His Cause. 

Whatever interpretation you may follow, if 
you go to the root of the cause of this man's 
death you will call it fear. Did God kill this 
man because he touched what Levites only 
should handle? If so you wish, I do not ob- 
ject, though I find it difficult to believe that 
God would smite with death where the motive 



The Suicide of Fear 89 

was pure, because the method blundered. If 
God should kill all who blunder in method 
about his ark, what should we do for work- 
men ? Since when did God put form of ritual 
before the motive of service? This man died 
of heart disease. "God slew him." Yes ; but 
with what weapon did he smite? Where did 
he strike — the head or the heart? You would 
find it difficult to prove this man had never 
touched the ark before. Who put it on the 
new cart when they started on the fateful 
journey? It had been in his father's house for 
near three generations. The Levite who came 
to care for it when first it was brought to 
his father's house seems to have been away 
this day. This calamity set David to find out 
how the ark should be handled. 

I am inclined to think that fear was both 
the source of his action and the cause of his 
death. It is hard to define fear in words. 
It is said to be, "A painful emotion or passion 
excited by the expectation of evil or harm, and 
accompanied by a strong desire to escape it ; 
an active feeling of dread of which fright and 
terror are the intenser degrees ; hence, appre- 
hension or dread in general. Strong and sud- 
den fear is accompanied by extreme physical 
disturbances, as trembling, paling, impair- 



90 The Divine Opportunity 

ment of the power of speech and action, etc." 
That is a definition in words. This incident 
defines in living pictures. Fear turns a holiday 
into national mourning; sends a joyous king 
to his disappointed capital in grief; detains 
the ark for three long months. As this man 
lifts his hand under its inspiration, it blanches 
his cheek, arrests the circulating blood, and 
pushing back the stream of life it makes the 
beating heart to cease. An idea and an action ; 
an apprehension for the ark of God, and a dec- 
laration that a frightened man can help the 
Deity. Think of the sacrilege of it — afraid 
for God, therefore help Him ! That God can- 
not allow. He turns back the flood of fear on 
man's own fearful heart, and stops it in its 
beating. This is the judgment of God, already 
passed, on him who is afraid. 

Do you fear for your country? Are you 
afraid that of, and for, and by the people will 
be tumbled from its niche at the first rough 
place on life's highway? Then you are your 
country's enemy and a national coward. What 
inspiration can you give? Do you not know 
that a form of government that will not stand 
the stress of life is not worth the blood that 
men poured out for its creation? Are you not 
aware that already the test of history has tried 



The Suicide of Fear 91 

the form we love ; and from the bloodiest strife 
of modern times the republic came to gird 
itself with vigor new, and sit among the pow- 
ers of the world to speak its word in inter- 
national life. Afraid? Then for all purposes 
of progress you are dead. 

Are you fearful for the church to which you 
belong? You are thereby disqualified to help 
her. You believe she has seen her best days? 
No church has seen her best that will keep 
moving. They are standing still who look 
behind for the glory of God's cause. Have 
you forgotten the Master's promise? Do you 
forget that Death has reaped the surface of 
the earth quite bare one hundred and twelve 
times since the birth of Jesus, and still his 
church is stronger than it ever was before? 
Since he spake his promise with regard to this 
shrine we call the church, nations that made 
her to pass through fire, and baptized her in 
her own blood, have become dust on the high- 
way of the centuries down which she marches ; 
her hands loaded with victory and her heart 
full of song. If you are afraid keep your 
hands off, or your fear shall be your grave; 
but to a larger place the ark shall move. Re- 
member Gideon's host, and learn that fearful 
men are useless to the church. The only thing 



92 The Divine Opportunity 

for you to do, if now you are afraid, is — die. 
That is what you do to all intent and purpose 
when your action is inspired by fear. 

Have you a theology for which you are 
fearful? Then do not preach it. It will kill 
you, and ought to. It will not do the ark a 
lasting injury that you fall by the wayside; it 
may keep the multitude waiting some weeks 
longer; but the ark is going to the capitol of 
the great King. Have you never noticed that 
the negatives of Jesus are affirmative in form ? 
Don't you know that a simple declarative sen- 
tence has more strength than a hundred in the 
subjunctive mood? One ounce of faith is 
heavier than a ton of doubt. The strength 
of Calvinism was in the vigor of its affirma- 
tion ; and not till men wavered in its use was 
it discovered, by them, to be faulty. It is a 
law of life that what man does not believe 
cannot be mighty in his hand. It may be pol- 
ished as an arrow, but it will break at the 
stretching of the string. You cannot shoot it. 
It is sacrilege to take your doubts and ques- 
tioning into the pulpit of a church. Stand 
and watch the ark tremble if you must, but in 
the name of history and God do not touch it 
in your fear! Leave the unsettled in your 
study till the fight is over. Wait till it finds its 



The Suicide of Fear 93 

place at one side or the other, and learn to 
throw your negations as the Master threw 
his: "It hath been said, . . . But I say unto 
you." Give the listening soul a conviction. 
You cannot feed God's sheep on market quota- 
tions. "Ifs" never make the soul strong; 
they are made to try it. If it is your business 
to be a tempter preach a gospel of ifs; but 
do not forget who is your Master as you do so. 
The soldier who is in the midst of a bloody 
battle has no time to look whether the edge of 
his sword is nicked. Strike! Strike hard! 
Let the result of your blow determine the cali- 
ber of your weapon and the strength of your 
arm. 

Are you fearful for the gospel ? Is Christ's 
cause a question with you? Then what right 
have you to touch it? Recall the time when 
the ark went without driver; two milch kine, 
whose calves were fastened in their stalls, 
made a bee line for the land to which the ark 
belonged, "lowing as they went," calling for 
their young they left behind; "and turned 
not aside to the right hand or to the left," 
nor did they rest till in the midst of a field 
where Levites were at work. Higher criti- 
cism? A gospel that is not brightened by all 
honest thought, and that cannot outlive the 



94 The Divine Opportunity 

dishonesty of its foes, is not the gospel cart 
beside which immortal men should march. 
Has it never occurred to you that God was 
once alone in his faith in the gospel? God 
dared to believe in the cross before history 
tried it. Christ was before his followers. Are 
you brave enough to tremble for redemption 
and put a question mark beside the "power of 
God"? Before the morning stars began to 
sing he reared the cross on the summit of his 
eternal purpose. On it all the worlds have 
hung for countless ages; every soul's well- 
being to it is tied, and with the growing 
centuries its glory still increases. This ark 
will reach its goal though all the sons of men 
should doubt and in their doubting die. Who 
are you that come in fear to help the cause 
that bears the weight of every soul of man, 
and staggers not nor trembles for the out- 
come? Stand beside your Lord, and when 
he is afraid it will be time for you to commit 
moral suicide by yielding to your fear. It 
will be a man and not a cause that dies. He 
never was afraid. Fear is an experience that 
Jesus could not know. In the darkest hour 
of his cause his face was luminous with his 
own Deity ; and in the shadow of his cross he 
prayed for teeming multitudes of men that 






The Suicide of Fear 95 

should believe in him. The stability of Christ's 
gospel is in itself. The cross is no experiment 
with God. The ark may pass from Israelite 
to Philistine, from tent to temple, from Jew 
to Gentile, from Asia to Europe, to America 
or China, or any other place, but his presence 
shall go with his people, and they shall come 
to the eternal city, having left the dead behind. 



THE PREPARATION OF A MAN FOR A 
PROPHET'S PLACE 

"As for the likeness of their faces, they four had 
the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the 
right side: and they four had the face of an ox 
on the left side; they four also had the face of an 
eagle." — Ezek. i. 10. 

A little over twenty-four hundred years 
ago the king of Babylon encamped against the 
city of Jerusalem, besieged and laid it waste. 
"And he carried out thence all the treasures of 
the house of the Lord, and the treasures of 
the king's house, and cut in pieces all the 
vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel 
had made in the temple of the Lord, as the 
Lord had said. And he carried away all Jeru- 
salem, and all the princes, and all the mighty 
men of valor, even ten thousand captives, and 
all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, 
save the poorest sort of the people of the 
land. . . . All that were strong and apt for 
war, even them the king of Babylon brought 
captive to Babylon." Among the captives was 
Ezekiel, who spent five years in this dread 
captivity, and then "the heavens were opened, 



A Man for a Prophet's Place 97 

and I saw visions of God." The darkness of 
his daily life was made a background for the 
light of God. The great visions of the Bible 
have come to captive prophets, or those strug- 
gling with very adverse conditions. In his 
vision he saw coming from the north a great 
whirlwind and a fire and a brightness about it. 
Out of the midst of the fire came four living 
creatures "and they had the likeness of a man." 
They had four faces on the four sides. They 
came and went with the rapidity of lightning; 
and they turned not when they went. If in 
the direction of the lion's face, that was the 
face the creature showed in its goings ; if as a 
man, an ox, it turned not when it went. When 
the eagle's face directed the movement the 
man, the lion, and the ox rose as on an eagle's 
wings. On the heads of these living creatures 
rested a "firmament," above which was "the 
likeness of a throne, . . . and upon the 
likeness of the throne was the likeness as the 
appearance of a man above upon it. . . . 
This was the appearance of the likeness of the 
glory of the Lord." Here we have a vision of 
the king and his messenger, the creature on 
whose head his throne is carried. If Ezekiel 
would fill his place this creature is what he 
must be. This vision is God's preparation of 



98 The Divine Opportunity 

the prophet for his place. Again and again it 
recurred to him through the years. In it he 
found his inspiration. 

He who would be God's messenger to men, 
himself must have "the face of a man." Men 
are not particularly gifted at understanding 
angels; and I am not certain that the angels 
know man thoroughly. The gulf between the 
two is not often crossed. Lions are not com- 
mon messengers to men. An ox is not ex- 
ceedingly exalted as a bearer of glad tidings. 
All the great truths of God to men have come 
by man. 

Pick up the smallest task in the vineyard of 
God, and you have a man's work in your 
hands. The task of guiding a pair of little 
feet in the way of life is worthy of any man. 
Shame on the men, that in the Sunday schools 
should be a dearth of virile leadership. It is 
not because it is not a manly work, but 
because we shirk the work of men. 

Who will go to a captive nation and face 
the task of saving a discouraged people? 
Ezekiel will meet questions greater than the 
sciences can ask. A mere mathematician can 
tell the direction of a star, the orbit of a 
world. But it needs a scientist of a higher 
order to detect the movements of the Almighty 



A Man for a Prophet's Place 99 

and control the destiny of his people. He who 
would save a discouraged race must grasp 
them with more than the knowledge of a fact. 
A prophet's business can be done only by one 
who has "the face of a man." The highest of 
God's creatures, the best product of his grace, 
is none too good to go for God to men. Some 
have supposed that any specimen was good 
enough for God's work. He has always used 
the best that he could find. The prophets, 
apostles, and leaders in the world's religious 
life have been the highest types of men. Be- 
cause God's work reaches the lowest, men have 
confounded the workman with his work. He 
sends a man, in whose blood the freedom of 
the mountain torrent sings, to a city and to 
slaves, to make of them a people. To "thieves, 
drunkards, revilers, extortioners, idolaters, 
adulterers, fornicators," to men unspeakably 
vile, God sends the great apostle Paul. An 
angel and his wings are at the service of a 
pair of human feet ; and God's Son lives as a 
Son of man in one of the darkest hours of the 
world's dark history. God makes his best his 
messenger to men. 

No man is too good; then what can man 
have that is too precious for man's service ? He 
must give his best to his fellows. "The face 



iL.ofC. 



ioo The Divine Opportunity 

of a man" — the thoughtful face of all the 
faces in the world. The most degraded face 
in human kind is more intelligent than the 
highest in the brute creation. The work of 
God demands the highest intelligence in life. 
Do not think anything is good enough for 
your fellows; but, rather, "Nothing is too 
good for them to whom God sends me." 
For all the sweep of man's great mind the 
work of God will find abundant room. All 
that man is in body, mind, and soul he is as 
a preparation for the work of God among his 
fellow men. Outside the orbits in which 
science moves, there are no undiscovered facts 
the mind of man shall master, which the 
prophets of our God will not impress into the 
service of their fellows. With fingers but an 
inch in length he grasps the thunderbolts and 
makes them bearers of his burdens, the means 
by which he gives form to the deepest longings 
of his soul, and makes the best within himself 
the common property of all. His best con- 
trivances are sanctified by the fact that he 
bends them to the service of his God, and 
stamps them with the impress of his own 
intellectual and moral being. 

The flowers, forces, birds, and beasts have 
missions; but the missionary on whom God 



A Man for a Prophet's Place ioi 

puts most, and from whom he most exacts, is 
man. The imperative need of God's prophets, 
when sent to men, is the introduction that 
nothing can give but "the face of a man." 
So essential is it that he who comes shall be 
like those to whom he comes — of the same ma- 
terial made — that God sends a slave born to 
slaves in fact; a captive prophet to a captive 
people ; "the chief of sinners," "saved," to sin- 
ners needy. And so supreme is this great law 
that when He who sat upon the throne Ezekiel 
saw would come to men he took not on him- 
self angelic form, but the seed of Abraham, 
and was made like unto his brethren. We do 
not yet know Christ as God. We believe him 
so to be. We are still struggling with his 
matchless humanity. When we have mastered 
that we are ready for his Godhead. We can- 
not reverse the order. It is not essential that 
God become man to know man ; but it is essen- 
tial that the "Son of man" be the Son of God 
that man may know God. The divinity of 
Jesus is a human, not a divine, necessity. The 
prophet's first vision of God shows him the 
"likeness of a man" on the throne. The first 
face he sees on this majestic messenger, who 
moves mid flashing fire, is a man's face. The 
first impression may be of tempest and con- 



102 The Divine Opportunity 

suming fire ; but as the vision shapes itsdf to 
wings and feet it is seen the creature wears 
''the face of a man." That insures the wisdom 
of its movement ; and above it is "the likeness" 
of another Man, who rests his throne, among 
man, on the head of the four-faced creature 
that is below him. Let the artists still dream, 
and gather the finest features of the race into 
one composite face. It is right they should. 
When from the captivity of human life we 
look out into the great unknown, if God vouch- 
safe to us any vision of himself, we shall see 
him in "the face of a man." "Let all God's 
prophets look and know that he who to his 
fellow men would go, himself must have "the 
face of a man." 

"The face of a lion." Life has room for 
more than wisdom. It sometimes calls for 
naught but daring. The north pole is a long 
way from human habitation. Man's desire to 
reach it is neither foolish nor foolhardy; but 
the wisdom of the man seems lost in the dar- 
ing of his going. Sometimes the only thing to 
do is to throw discretion to the winds and let 
the lion have his way. Turn over the leaves 
of God's Book, name any of its great prophets, 
and you describe them when you say, "He was 
a lion." The most daring things that history 



A Man for a Prophet's Place 103 

tells have not been done on battlefields, where 
all the deviltry of nature wakes and man for- 
gets that he is man; but when in the calm 
contemplation of God's law, and the knowl- 
edge that his king has violated those eternal 
principles by which a courageous king should 
stand, the prophet weaves his parable and 
meets the monarch to shake at him a bare right 
arm and say, "Thou art the man." To meet 
the prophets of Baal and the prophets of the 
groves, surrounded by a backslidden nation, 
and stand alone for God and truth — those are 
the bravest things men do. To dare, as 
Ezekiel did, to look a fact in the face and at- 
tempt the renovation of a fallen people — that 
is the bravery of principle, not impulse; and 
these are the brave deeds of history. Open at 
random the history of God's people, and when 
you find anything being done for the race you 
will find the bravery of the lion directed by 
the genius of the man. It takes a brave man 
to be God's messenger, and in his cause there 
is room for the highest type of daring. If you 
doubt it try the business. Great numbers cry, 
"The preachers are afraid of men who have 
money;" and others, "Don't oppose the ma- 
jority or you will lose your hold." Between 
unrighteous greed on one hand, and un- 



104 The Divine Opportunity 

scrupulous ignorance, on the other, you will 
have abundant opportunity to try your mettle. 
God's prophet will need to be brave if he would 
be true. In every walk of life, in every office 
in the land, at every desk, by every loom, from 
the highest to the lowest positions life affords, 
men daily come face to face with circumstances 
that demand they shall have "the face of a 
lion." That he shall bravely leap and ask no 
questions as to danger, "What will people 
think, or say?" what cares a lion? It is a 
question of life or death, shirking or daring, 
and the lion — leaps. 

"The face of a lion" is on the same side as 
"the face of a man." With God's prophets 
daring is the highest wisdom. The lion looks 
in the same direction as the man. We some- 
times lose the daring of the prophet's action 
in the glory of his message. The gospel often 
hides the one who brings it. We have lost 
sight of the bravery of Jesus, "the lion of the 
tribe of Judah." Than his a braver life was 
never lived, and braver deeds were never done. 
We have lost the daring in the calmness of it, 
the majesty of the spring in the ease with 
which it seemed to be taken. To him the cross 
was heavy, the thorns were cruel. He was 
face to face with the bravest deed that man 



A Man for a Prophet's Place 105 

has seen when he turned his back on "the king- 
doms of the world" and set his face toward 
the cross. It was no small thing to Christ to 
die. Yet the arm that was bathed in a sweat 
of blood was put out without a tremor to re- 
ceive the cup that was given him to drink. 
The calmness with which he died and sub- 
mitted himself to the grave's embrace was the 
bravest deed of the bravest life the world has 
ever seen. Every messenger finds the quali- 
ties he needs have bloomed to perfection in 
his Master. Ezekiel, you will need "the face 
of a lion." 

"The face of an ox." There are more oxen 
than lions in the Bible. When Solomon built 
his "ivory throne . . . two lions stood beside 
the stays." When he made the "molten sea 
... it stood upon twelve oxen." There is 
more room in the world for oxen than for 
lions. Life has more burden bearing than 
deeds of daring. Lions were never hitched to 
any cart on which the "ark of the covenant" 
rested. The "ark of God" does not travel by 
leaps. 

If we could gather the work of life into one 
place, one point, then in one bold leap end it — 
how brave ! and — how easy ! But life is long 
as well as quick. God's work has strange 



106 The Divine Opportunity 

qualities in it. You finish it to-night and it 
awaits you in the morning. The wider the 
swath you cut, the bigger his field seems to 
become. It is only to those doing little that 
life seems small. If Ezekiel could have put 
all his messages into one it might have been 
more startling, but a far less prophet had been 
equal to its delivery. His work commenced in 
the fifth year of his captivity, in the "seven and 
twentieth year . . . the word of the Lord" 
was still coming to Ezekiel. Life calls for a 
hold as well as a reach. It is useless to reach 
unless later you grasp. 

Put all the claims the Sunday school has on 
us into one Sunday, and we all will do our 
duty. The trouble is there are fifty-two Sun- 
days in a year, and a number of years in the 
life of a child. Some one must guide those 
little feet to Somebody, year after year, and 
year after year. Most of God's people die 
before they see the end of duty. If the work 
of saving souls could all be put into "special 
meetings" more people would work at it. It 
is the reach of the business, and not its fervor, 
that people give up. 

Sometimes a bold leap is demanded, and 
Luther stands at the Diet of Worms. From 
there he goes to exile in the castle of a friend, 



A Man for a Prophet's Place 107 

patiently to put the New Testament into the 
vernacular of his people. Who will say the 
ox did less than the lion? Without the lion's 
leap the ox had never written. God's work- 
men must persevere as well as spring. Life 
lasts a long time, and keeps full of tasks. 
Some of them you cannot meet with the lion's 
bound ; they call for the patient plodding of the 
ox. The prophet's work may sometimes seem 
slow; but we ought to remember it is heavy, 
and moral distances are great. 

It is a false view of the work of Christ that 
measures it by years. He "once suffered," 
but he has always saved. He has his place in 
the Godhead because of his redemptive 
economy, and that economy is as eternal as 
himself. "He ever liveth" to make actual what 
his dying made possible. His work is long as 
well as great. 

Ezekiel, when you come to "bear the in- 
iquity of the house of Israel for three hundred 
and ninety days . . . and the iniquity of 
Judah forty days," and find this but a part of 
your burden, you will need to see "the glory 
of the God of Israel according to the vision 
you (I) saw in the plain." It will help you to 
remember God showed you then that you must 
have "the face of an ox." 



108 The Divine Opportunity 

"The face of an eagle." The greatest thing 
about a prophet is his vision — not his judg- 
ment, not his bravery, never his patience, but 
always his vision. He sees more than man's 
vision shows, or his daring has done— paths 
the ox has never trod. When the prophet 
wants to see he uses wings. He has a logic of 
feathers, and when he spreads his wings man, 
lion, and ox rise with the eagle, and from an 
aerial height see things that are to be. Show 
the ox where he is going and he will come 
down to plod on. Show the lion his prey and 
he will be glad to leap. Let the man see his 
task and all his wisdom will be directed to its 
achievement. But it takes an eagle to show it. 
Not every eagle is a prophet, but every prophet 
has "the face of an eagle." This is the one 
great quality of a prophet. Some have been 
wise, many have been brave, more have had to 
be patient ; but only prophets have "the face of 
an eagle." This is their inspiration. Captivity is 
not calculated to engender much enthusiasm; 
shown the end, by an eagle's glimpse, you will, 
wisely, boldly, plod toward the goal. Any 
fool can tell us where we are. We want some 
one who can see where we may go and direct 
us toward our redemption; and that is the 
business of God's prophets. 



A Man for a Prophet's Place 109 

"The face of an eagle." Turn to the seven- 
teenth chapter of John's gospel and read the 
Lord's prayer. The majesty of that prayer is not 
altogether in what it asks, there is some sub- 
limity in the "them" for whom it is made. Read 
it and note how it narrows : "I pray for them" 
(his disciples), "I pray not for the world." 
Follow the prayer until you catch the vision of 
it. "Neither pray I for these alone; but for 
them also which shall believe on me through 
their word." Was ever prayer made for so 
large a company before ? Down all the rolling 
centuries he looked and saw us one and all. 
The last of all the sons of men were in his 
vision as he prayed. We have been in the 
habit of thinking him in the valley. He was 
in "the Holy Place," with all his own about 
him. His humiliation? No; he was on the 
summit of his glorification — our "Great High 
Priest," with his universal church beneath his 
outstretched arms, and one petition for them 
all. He was so far above the centuries that 
he saw them every one. Surely, in perfection, 
he had "the face of an eagle." 

"As for the likeness of their faces, they four 
had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, 
on the right side: and they four had the face 
of an ox on the left side; they four also had 



no The Divine Opportunity 

the face of an eagle." Look, man! Look! 
Are you equal to the task? Can you go and 
always be a man? Will you dare the lion's 
part ? The years are long. Can you bear with 
the strength and patience of an ox and still 
plod on ? Will you brave the eagle's flight and 
dare to say just what you see? If you are 
equal to that, you can be a prophet. A prophet 
is more than a man, more than a lion, more 
than an ox, more than an eagle ; he is all com- 
bined. He who blends these qualities in the 
service of his fellow men is a prophet of our 
God. Not blood or country makes prophets. 
There are prophets, and God shows men in 
vision clear what he has called them to. 



HOW TO LIVE OUTSIDE ONE'S SELF 

"The spirit of the living creature was in the 
wheels." — Ezek. i. 20. 

In our last sermon we spoke to you about 
the living creatures. They were four-faced 
and mighty, rapid as the lightning in their 
movements, and resistless as the Almighty. 
We would now call your attention to a crea- 
tion of the creatures. As the prophet beheld 
he saw "their rings, they were so high that 
they were dreadful; and their rings were full 
of eyes round about them four. And when 
the living creatures went, the wheels went by 
them; and when the living creatures were 
lifted up from the earth, the wheels were 
lifted up. . . . When those went, these went; 
and when those stood, these stood; and when 
those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels 
were lifted up over against them : for the spirit 
of the living creature was in the wheels." No 
interpretation can escape the teaching that the 
wheels were dependent upon the creatures. 
When the creature went the wheels went, and 
followed as a man's shadow might follow him. 



ii2 The Divine Opportunity 

There are two lessons for us in these wheels. 
We shall note them in order and illustrate 
them somewhat fully. 

First, institutions are dependent. It is a 
very false view of life that looks on men as 
dependents. The world were quite a different 
world if man did nothing for it. The real 
dependencies in life are things. Take for 
illustration a battleship. That combines all 
the genius of our modern life: iron-ribbed, 
steel-clad, with latest devices in engines for 
the development of power ; best guns, last ex- 
plosive discovered; and all combined in such 
way as to make the greatest destructive imple- 
ment of modern times. Take the completed 
ship out into the stream, anchor it at the mouth 
of your harbor for protection to the city. 
There it swings, fair to look at, beautiful as 
a picture and just as helpless, notwithstand- 
ing its dread possibilities. It is only a thing, 
and of itself is helpless as a shadow ship would 
be. It is dependent. 

The same is true of institutions. Take the 
home — that is as absolutely dependent as the 
ship. It is a creation. Walls, pictures, luxu- 
rious quarters do not make a home. It is 
impossible to get together a sufficient number 
of things to make a home. Sacred as that 



To Live Outside One's Self 113 

institution is in our civilization, it is a de- 
pendent thing. It will not, it cannot, run itself. 
It is the circle round the living creatures it 
incloses. Full of life it may be, but it is the 
life of the creatures that are within. Add to 
it a child if you wish to see its dependence on 
the living creature. The death of an infant 
will throw a palace into the darkness of de- 
spair. The home lasts as long as the crea- 
tures, it ceases with their departure : the most 
heavenly place in our modern life, but just 
as dependent as a common thing. 

Enlarge the scope of the institution, but you 
carry the subordination with you. The public 
school is as dependent as the home or the ship. 
We have sometimes acted as if it had come to 
us with the strength of centuries in its make- 
up, and all we had to do was just sap the 
strength that it contained. A more foolish 
mistake could not be made. No generation has 
ever been able to build a public school system 
that would last through the lifetime of the 
following generation. It is not always what 
we wish it, but always what we make it. It 
is a creation, and a constant one. When we 
cease to care for our schools we shall have 
no schools for which to care. It will live no 
longer than it is kept alive by the infusion of 



H4 The Divine Opportunity 

the life of the living creatures around which 
it swings and with whom it moves, It is ours 
in more senses than possession. It is ours as 
a child is ours by birth, as a thing is ours by 
making. 

The same is true of our government, of all 
the governments of the world. They are what 
the living creatures make them. 

The church is among the class of dependent 
institutions. I know this is not the common 
way of looking at the church. Men have sup- 
posed that the church would take care of us ; 
that it was a something that would preserve 
our civilization for us, and mold us as clay is 
molded. Nothing could be more erroneous. 
The church is something we make. It is man's 
creation and on man it depends. 

The second thing we notice is, institutions 
are representative. Not only do they depend 
upon, but they rightly represent, the living 
creature: his movements — "When those went, 
these went;" his inactivity — "When those 
stood, these stood ;" his direction — "When 
those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels 
were lifted up over against them;" yea, the 
very essence of the creature — "For the spirit 
of the living creature was in the wheels." It 
is one of the impossibilities of life to keep our- 



To Live Outside One's Self 115 

selves within ourselves. Our spirit will go 
from us, and form about us, as surely as we 
are "living creatures." Around all living 
creatures a living circle forms. In our insti- 
tutions we see ourselves. They show our 
energy in the rapidity of their movements. 
When we rise, they rise; when we leap, they 
leap; when we plod, they go slowly; and our 
wisdom will shine in them as it lives in us. 
Institutions are representative things. 

Let us retrace our steps and tread our path 
once again. Take our battleship. What is a 
battleship ? It is a thing, a creation of man's ; 
but it is much more than that. It is a repre- 
sentative thing. It represents the genius of 
the nation. Its mechanical contrivances are 
such that an infant's finger might swing its 
great guns. Its deadly projectile is backed by 
a charge that will hurl the shell to plow its 
way through sheets of steel. It is the product 
of a nation's brains. The nation with the most 
deadly ship is the foremost in genius. It not 
only represents the genius of the country, but 
when in action it gathers up all the hate of a 
people — speaks for human lips through iron 
mouth, and hurls destruction in its mighty 
thunderbolts at those who are enemies of its 
makers. With the temper of the man behind 



n6 The Divine Opportunity 

the gun it speaks. It stands for the nation, 
says what the nation means, and is in its place 
a representative of the nation's power and 
valor. Great nations have strong navies. They 
swing at anchor in any port harmless as a log 
of wood while the nations are at peace. Let 
the dogs of war loose and these same ships 
become veritable demons of destruction. 

We shall see this better in a home. Some of 
us know more about a home than a battleship. 
The "atmosphere" of home is home in a deep 
and abiding sense. We know that the home 
represents the people; the kind of home, the 
kind of people. A short-tempered man and a 
quick-tempered woman will not make the 
same kind of home that a short-tempered man 
and a patient, loving woman will; and two 
kind, loving people will make another kind of 
home. The home represents the people. 

When we first went to housekeeping we did 
it in a very small way, for we had but three 
hundred and fifty dollars a year. We started 
in two rooms which we rented from a very 
genial old lady. When I introduced Mrs. S. 
to her she said: "Well, I suppose I ought to 
tell you that we are peculiar folks in this 
house. There are but two of us, and for our 
protection we keep two bears about the house 



To Live Outside One's Self 117 

all the time." Mrs. S. looked in amazement, 
and asked, "Where do you keep them?" "O, 
we let them run at large," said the old lady. 
"And what do you call them ?" "We call them 
Bear and Forbear," said the genial soul. That 
was a lovely home. It was restful to sit in it 
with your eyes shut and breathe its atmos- 
phere. 

Fathers and mothers, do not suppose you 
can be one kind of person and have another 
kind of home. The laws of life cannot be 
cheated. Moral laws are just as rigid as phys- 
ical laws. You will make the home in large 
part, and it will be not only a likeness of your- 
self, but a veritable living otherself in which 
you will be represented so truly that the home 
will be as much like you as God's Book is like 
God's truth. 

The public school is a picture of the public. 
The old idea of school with its birch rod and a 
refined (sometimes) kind of cruelty is gone. 
The old folks did not like to see it go. They 
thought we should grow up to be dunces if we 
were not driven. They were masters at the 
outward driving. It is doubtful if they had 
discovered the internal compulsion on which 
to-day we depend. It is the only kind of 
driving that amounts to anything. The old 



n8 The Divine Opportunity 

school is gone because the old folks are gone. 
We have a new school because we have a new 
kind of people. If we had some habits of the 
fathers we should cling to a text-book of the 
fathers. Do you know why the Bible is ex- 
cluded from our public schools? Because we 
have not a Bible-reading public. Given a 
Bible-loving public we should have the Bible 
in our public school. It is not that we are 
afraid of sectarianism; that we dread far less 
than the fathers did, who made the Bible the 
chief text-book of the school. It is absent 
from the school because it is neglected by the 
public. 

The subjects for study in the public school 
change because the tastes of the people change. 
We crowd our children in their studies be- 
cause we are a strenuous people. The schools 
of the country represent the attainment of the 
country. They are we. They are the public 
in one colossal institution that stands for all. 
When we care not for knowledge the school 
will cease. They not only depend upon us, 
but they represent us in the strictest meaning 
of the word. They represent our attainment, 
our love for learning, all that we have become 
in that direction. 

Our country is different from other coun- 



To Live Outside One's Self 119 

tries because we are unlike other peoples. It 
differs to-day from what it was when the In- 
dians roamed its forests because we are not 
Indians. That is all. Its mountains were as 
rich in mineral resources when Spain con- 
trolled it as they are to-day; but it is another 
country. It is our country; nay, it is us. 

The church is a representative institution. 
The living beings that to-day compose it are 
represented by it. Each church has its atmos- 
phere because it has individuals. No preacher 
can go from one pulpit to another and feel the 
same in each. You have sat in a church, and 
after service have said, "I do not like that 
church, it is not like ours." It is nothing 
against a church that it is not like yours. That 
may be a compliment to it. Superficial people 
think, because it is not like, it is not as good. 
Your home is not like mine; but it may be 
better. It would be well to remember this 
fact: the church represents us. Let me com- 
mend this to those who deride the church. If 
they are outside the church, all right. I have 
heard a blackguard deride a lovely Christian 
home ; but I would take the home and let him 
swear. The man who is in the church and 
mocks at it is both foolish and sinful — foolish 
because he derides himself; sinful because he 



120 The Divine Opportunity 

could make it better if he would improve him- 
self. Think of a man standing before a mirror 
and talking like this: "Well, what a face! 
Look at that nose ! Why, those eyes are odd ; 
and what high cheek bones !" Some friend 
might touch him on the shoulder and say, 
"That is your face, and it looks just like you." 
If you wish to change the picture you must 
change the feature. You must better yourself 
to better the church. You must rise if you 
would lift its life. You cannot drive the 
church as you drive a team. It follows you, 
not goes before you. Run and it will run with 
you. Lag and it will linger. Every man sees 
in the church a transcript of himself. "The 
spirit of the living creature is in the wheels." 
The spirit that touches him first is the spirit 
that emanates from him. 

Applying this thought historically, you will 
see that it is next to foolish to talk about an 
apostolic church being with us to-day. The 
apostolic church ceased with the death of the 
last apostle, and became the church of the 
successors to the apostles. When it fostered 
ignorance it was composed largely of ignorant 
people. When it became a cruel institution it 
had cruel people in it. When in the strength 
of its powers, and the spirit of its Lord, it 



To Live Outside One's Self 121 

carried the gospel to the poor and oppressed, 
it was because inside of it were men whose 
hearts had been "strangely warmed." What 
the church is we are. What we are the church 
will be. We make it. It is what we make. It 
is ourselves outside ourselves. The life of the 
church will never rise above its people; and it 
will never sink below it. 

Take care of you ? It is better than that ; it 
is something for you to take care of. Make 
you rich? Yes, in the truest sense; but it 
will do better than bring you money. It will 
bring you an opportunity to use money. Come, 
ye rich men who are afraid to die rich, pour 
in here your gold, and it will pay you divi- 
dends in redeemed souls and saved peoples. 
No market offers you the same chance to 
make the mammon of unrighteousness into 
everlasting wealth. This is the bank that does 
not break, the bag that grows not old. Treas- 
ure poured in here is laid up in heaven. It is 
better than a garden of flowers, it is "the vine- 
yard of the Lord" ; and the command is, "Son, 
go work to-day in my vineyard." If you 
would not have it filled with weeds you must 
pull them. If you would eat its fruit you must 
till its soil. 

Bring your best thoughts here; that is the 



122 The Divine Opportunity 

most certain way to make them the common 
property of the race. He who gives most lives 
most ; and here is your best chance for largest 
giving. It offers you the best opening for 
largest living that life affords. It will enable 
you to send your spirit where you cannot go, 
to breathe blessings on those you can reach in 
no other way. Pour in here your rich red 
blood, the best gifts of your mind, and the en- 
thusiasm of your soul. All that here you lose 
you will save forever. Think what the Master 
poured into it. Remember how Paul gave to 
it. See how it used the blood of martyrs to 
build everlasting habitations. 

Let us make it better; that can only be 
done by self-improvement. Enrich it; that 
can only be done by gift of self. If it were a 
divine institution, in the sense of depending 
only on God, it would be alike everywhere, 
and no amount of laggards could impede it. 
God's Spirit reaches the institution only 
through the "living creatures. ,, It is ours. It 
is the best opportunity life offers. God 
touches the "living creatures," and they create 
the living institution and thus bring God in 
touch with life. He has no institution without 
some other living being between himself and 
it. Walk, run, fly, and the church will follow ; 



To Live Outside One's Self 123 

for, "When the living creatures went, the 
wheels went by them: and when the living 
creatures were lifted up from the earth, the 
wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the 
spirit was to go, they went, thither was their 
spirit to go ; and the wheels were lifted up over 
against them: for the spirit of the living 
creature was in the wheels." 



A NEW POSITION ON AN OLD 
BATTLEGROUND 

"And we know that all things work together for 
good to them that love God, to them who are the 
called according to his purpose. For whom he did 
foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed 
to the image of his Son, that he might be the first- 
born among many brethren. Moreover whom he 
did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he 
called, them he also justified: and whom he justi- 
fied, them he also glorified." — Rom. 8. 28-30. 

To theology this passage has been the 
scene of some of the fiercest forensic battles. 
And no wonder, for each time you change the 
emphasis you get another meaning. There are 
some great words in this sentence; but every 
system has a center, and every paragraph has 
a key. We must find the soul of this state- 
ment, the core of this passage, if we would 
understand the sublimity of its reach and the 
grandeur of its application. We have abused 
it by a use of a part of it in our use of "All 
things work together for good to them that 
love God." Some have lost its meaning in a 
hazy use of the word "predestinate." The 
soul of this paragraph is in the word "pur- 



On an Old Battleground 125 

pose." The purpose of God — than that, noth- 
ing can be larger, nothing more far-reaching. 
It grasps "all things," reaches through all 
ages, and is a fact in both eternities. Let us 
call attention to some self-evident things. 

God could not be without a purpose. We 
have only to say it to see it. A God with noth- 
ing to do, and seeking to do nothing in par- 
ticular, is unthinkable. Divine activity with 
no objectivity is impossible. God must have a 
purpose. In the seething fire mists a purpose 
lay. Over the ordered worlds a purpose like a 
mantle hung. The growing grass, the whole 
creation, tended to some finality. Man, the sum- 
mit of God's activity with dust, is here for a rea- 
son, and with him is an end. For God to make 
a race with no object therefor is a blasphemy. 

It is self-evident that God could not change 
his purpose. To make it less would be a viola- 
tion of his own nature. He cannot lower it. 
It is impossible for him to enlarge it. That 
would be a declaration that less than the 
highest had sufficed him. The whole moral 
world would be thrown into confusion if God 
should change his purpose. He will not aim 
at lower than his best ; he will not seek to ac- 
complish less than he is able. His purpose is 
fixed as himself because fixed in himself. He 



126 The Divine Opportunity 

is at once the source and the end of all moral 
tendencies 

It is self-evident he will not fail in his pur- 
pose. For him to fail is to write failure on all 
things and all beings. Himself would be a 
failure. I know the story of the fall; the im- 
possibility of relating to things as we see 
them the statement I make. I know also the 
fall did not take the Divine unawares. He had 
provided for that before it happened. Light 
was before the eye, and remedy was before dis- 
ease. Christ was before Adam, and redemp- 
tion before sin. I am aware of the utter in- 
ability of man to relate the little that he sees 
to the things that are true of the Almighty, but 
shall I violate the constitution of my own mind 
because of the frailty of my judgment? He 
will not fail. History may be long and bloody, 
but God will not grow weary. Sin may be 
mighty and the contest long, but God will never 
be worn out. He can remake the stars a 
million times and watch them fade away, but 
he cannot relinquish his purpose nor change 
his desire. His purpose is as firmly fixed in 
himself as he is firmly established on his 
throne. The centuries will give birth to no 
power that shall defeat him. 

What can be larger than the purpose of 



On an Old Battleground 127 

God? What can outreach it in duration? 
What world can be so mighty that it shall not 
swing inside this orbit? What finite being 
shall say, "Here the Divine began, and there 
he must cease" ? 

Can the Divine make known to me his will, 
his purpose? An affirmative answer to this 
question must be given or we have no basis 
for knowledge. The science of the twentieth 
century is possible because we are capable of 
understanding him when he speaks in star or 
stone or law. Spiritual life is possible only 
because we can think his thoughts after him. 
For what reason should God ever keep the 
right to touch man's spirit unless to make 
known his will? I shall know him only 
through his manifested will, his revealed pur- 
pose. What is that objective of the divine 
activity that is worthy of being described as the 
purpose of the Almigthy God ? 

Let us read : "For whom he did foreknow" 
— it is evident that that is supremely his own 
knowledge. What the great God foreknows is 
not matter for human investigation. God's 
knowledge and foreknowledge are not in the 
human arena for measurement. We are clearly 
beyond our depth in the foreknowledge of 
God. "Whom he did foreknow, he also did 



128 The Divine Opportunity 

predestinate" — that is, unalterably fix in his 
mind, set as the goal. Fix, but what he fixed 
is not yet spoken. We are told he knew, and 
he predestined; but to what? Read: "Whom 
he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be 
conformed to the image of his Son. That is the 
purpose of God. We do not yet understand 
all things he has made, but we now know why 
he made them. In that blessed objective all the 
light of his divine nature shines out on the 
world with a splendor that is still dark to us 
because of its brightness. If one could go 
from Sahama, the highest volcano in the world, 
to Mount Etna, which is more than twelve 
thousand feet below it, he would know to what 
Mount Etna tends. The summit may some- 
times fall, but it broadens the base in doing so. 
Even the convulsion that rends it, lifts it. 
Above the common level, and the highest 
reaches of human life, towers the Son of God 
and Son of man. "That he might be the first- 
born among many brethren" — there he stands, 
supreme, sublime, alone, but he is a prophecy 
as well as a fact. It is the purpose of the Al- 
mighty to make men like unto his own Son. 
Let us pause a moment to think of it and then 
say something about it. 

It is worthy of God — so worthy of him that 



On an Old Battleground 129 

all the intelligences of the universe could add 
nothing to it. No angel can conceive of rising 
above the Christ. God himself can think noth- 
ing better for us. His purpose expresses his 
will and himself. His own image is in his 
purpose. He seeks to make us like unto his 
Son because there is nothing better than his 
Son to make us like unto. 

Note how God's Book deals with this idea. 
When Moses wrote a history of creation he 
dismissed the making of the stars with a very 
short sentence : "He made the stars also." But 
how he lingered about the making of the man ! 
With what persistence he follows him! A 
real understanding of the story will recognize 
that God is still at the task. That Moses 
should have mistaken the finished body and 
soul for the end of God's work is not strange. 
Man was far from a finished soul when he be- 
came a living one. Paul did not so conceive 
the purpose or the work of God. In his 
thought Christ completes Adam. The first 
man is of the earth earthy, the second man is 
the first completed. The image of the first is 
but the foundation on which the second is to 
be built. "As we have borne the image of the 
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the 
heavenly." Ask Paul who was the first com- 



130 The Divine Opportunity 

pleted man and he will answer, "Christ" 
Christ is "the firstborn of many brethren" — 
not in any sense of preexistence only, but in 
historical fact and finish ; the oldest of the sons 
of God, the "first fruits" of the great harvest 
that ripens for the sickle. Looking at Christ 
you see not only the Son of God, but man com- 
pleted, for he is also the "Son of man." 

Note the prophet's conception : "He shall sit 
as a refiner and purifier of silver." He watches 
the seething processes of life till his own image 
looks him in the face and man is pure "even as 
he is pure." Man is not finished till the dross 
is gone. 

The New Testament gives the thought in so 
many forms that it would be difficult to ex- 
haust them. He is held up as our example; 
but the impossible can never be an example. 
He is our promise; for, "It doth not yet ap- 
pear what we shall be : . . .we shall be like 
him ; for we shall see him as He is." All the 
attributes of the divine combine to make of 
man the best that God can make of a creature 
— like unto his Son. Conformity to Christ — 
that is what all the fires of life mean, what all 
its turmoil and disappointments mean; that is 
where the "all things work together for good" 
belongs — not the good of the pocketbook, nor 



On an Old Battleground 131 

always the body, but the good of that in us 
that can be made to conform to the image of 
the Christ. 

Little, sinful, shortsighted, yes, I know; 
self-willed and ignorant, of that I am aware; 
but God does not despair. Why should I? If 
he will hold to the objective I will seek to be 
patient with the process. It is a process. Re- 
demptive forces are creative forces. Christ 
brought a new civilization. He brought new 
ideals, and a new power that is equal to mak- 
ing of us "new creatures in Christ Jesus." 

It is an essential likeness we are to come to. 
We are to be like him in spirit — no wish but to 
do God's will, no rebellion of soul, no crooked 
motives, no holding back from doing his will, 
though to meet it I shrink ; in the darkest hour 
to say, "Not my will, but Thine, be done ;" like 
him to have an unbroken communion with 
God; like Him to see God clearly because the 
heart is pure; to be capable of detecting the 
spirit of a question when the words seem to 
hide its meaning; to see God in the growing 
flower, his goodness in the falling rain and the 
shining sun; not to be fooled by the robe sin 
wears, not to be bought by the price sin offers. 
What a world ours will be when we get not 
only a vision of the Christ but the Christ 



/ 



132 The Divine Opportunity 

vision! O to see with the clearness of truth 
and decide with the firmness of goodness! 
Like him in the power to resist ; not to fail on 
the negative side of life ; not to be wanting in 
the positive qualities, but to do the will of God ; 
not seeking to do my own will, but the will of 
him that sent me; like him to bear my cross, 
to go to my Calvary; like him to commit my 
spirit to his hands and go in triumph through 
the gates of death to deathless life ; like him to 
rise in triumph from the grave and take my 
place by my Master's side at God's right hand ; 
like him to grasp all the possibilities the Divine 
can put in the nature of man — this not angels 
nor God can improve as an objective for men ; 
and toward that the Eternal Power of the uni- 
verse has unalterably set his mind and fixed as 
the thing he will do for men. "To be con- 
formed to the image of his Son" — that is 
worthy of the Deity; to make black souls 
white, small men great, earthly men heavenly, 
me Christly. While God holds to that purpose 
I care not what happens. His purpose will 
outlive the years, and the grave will never 
touch it. 

"His purposes will ripen fast, 

Unfolding every hour: 
The bud may have a bitter taste, 

But sweet will be the flower." 



On an Old Battleground 133 

To this end he has arranged every particle 
of matter that has been created, guiding the 
changing history of the world, building em- 
pires and burying civilizations. To this end 
he has harnessed peace to war and sent the 
white-robed messenger down the centuries that 
were drenched in blood. To this end he has 
cleansed our very words and sweetened human 
speech, has made the lightning carry human 
thought, and has put into the very constitution 
of things that goodness is in itself immortal. 
For this purpose he formed the laws of life 
and framed the universe we see. To stretch 
our thought he has put us in the center of im- 
mensity. To give us opportunity he has set us 
in the center of the eternities. We are as near 
the beginning as the end, and we shall never 
be nearer to either. The darkness means that 
light will come. The morning promises the 
noon, and that will be eternal day. In one 
mighty providential sweep he gathers in the 
flying dust, the colors of the setting sun, all 
forms of life, the rising and the falling tides 
of history, all that the centuries have seen. The 
expulsion from Eden was a drift toward Cal- 
vary. "All things" — big things, little things, 
good things, bad things — "all things," bent to 
his will and used by his power, "work together 



134 The Divine Opportunity 

for good to them that love God, to . . . the 
called according to his purpose." All powers 
of will, of mind, of love, center in the Christ. 
If in Christ all the fullness of the Godhead 
does not dwell, the Jew is right, and we must 
look for another. We must have the best ob- 
jective possible to God, and that must be 
himself. God must be in objective form. We 
shall never be like what we never see. The 
divinity of Jesus is a human necessity. 

Now as to the method : "Moreover whom he 
did predestinate" — we do no violence when we 
say "to be conformed to the image of his Son," 
for that is what gives meaning to "predesti- 
nate" — "them he also called: and whom he 
called, them he also justified: and whom he 
justified, them he also glorified." Whoever 
interprets this verse must put it down as the 
method God uses in accomplishing his purpose. 
To move from method to terms in this place 
borders on the sacrilegious. Some things 
should be true about God's method. It ought 
to be the best and most effectual he could de- 
vise ; and probably it is. He who measures the 
method grasps the purpose ; for there must be 
some parity between them. Many of the com- 
mentaries amount to this : If your experience 
is like mine you are "effectually called" ; if you 



On an Old Battleground 135 

are unlike me you are left out. Who will un- 
dertake to decide the measure of God's call? 
Has God spoken to the world in nothing but 
Hebrew and Greek ? Was the race without the 
voice of God till the call of Abraham? Can 
you look down all the rolling centuries, the 
crowded world, and pick out, by your little 
measure, whom he has called and whom he 
has "passed by"? Is a thing bound to be as 
we think because we do not understand it? 
Will you build a fence and then say all the 
ways God has of calling men are inside ? Has 
your heart risen in desire above your attain- 
ment ; have you longed for a better life ? Did 
any strange light ever shine on some passage 
of Scripture and startle you with its illumina- 
ting power and impulse Godward ? Has your 
thought ever moved from a fleeting to a lasting 
subject and you knew not why? These and a 
thousand other ways God has of "calling" men. 
One thing is certain : If we do not know the 
many ways he calls, we know what the call is 
to — not to a creed, but a character; and the 
creed that does not make Christly is not help- 
ful, but hurtful. He who turns his back on 
any call from God not only turns his back on 
the personal Christ, but, far worse than that, 
he turns his back on personal Christliness. Are 



136 The Divine Opportunity 

we still in the realm of the calling? I should 
not wonder. Certain it is that the call comes 
from without; and God calls in many ways. 
"Whom he called, them he also justified." 
Justification is not outward in the same sense 
that the "call" is outward. While it may be an 
act on the part of God, it is one of those actions 
of the Divine Being that becomes a process in 
the person on whom he is acting. No legal 
terms, or acts, that leave out the mysterious 
processes of a vitalizing life can be a descrip- 
tion of justification. It is more than a change 
of my status, it is a change of me. 

No human arithmetic can compute the ways 
in which he calls ; not all the sum of human ex- 
periences have exhausted the meaning of "he 
justified." What shall we say of "he glori- 
fied" ? The descriptions of the glorified Christ 
bewilders us. "We shall be like him." The 
method is threefold in terms but single in fact. 
God never lets go with one hand to take hold 
with the other. One object, one vast, far- 
reaching method that will end only in the ac- 
complishing of his purpose, and when we are 
completed a glorious life and service awaits us. 



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